A contact warning, before we start, we should note that this episode contains some strong language.

Welcome to Legacy and the third episode in our series on Marilyn Monroe.

In the last episode, we saw Marilyn split from Fox Studios and from her husband,

Joe DiMaggio, too. But she's on a massive career high. She's made the seven-year itch with Fox

just before she split from them. It's a box office success and a summer hit across the United

States in the summer of 1955. Marilyn Monroe is a massive star, but she's a box office success and a summer hit across the United States in the summer of 1955.

Marilyn Monroe is a massive star, but she wants to be more than just the blonde.

She wants to be known as a great actress.

Thank you. From Wondry and Goalhanger, I'm Peter Franklin Penn.

I'm Afwa Hirsch.

And this is Legacy, the show that tells the lives of the most extraordinary men and women ever to have lived, and asked if they have the reputation that they deserve.

This is Marilyn Monroe, episode three, drama, Drink and Drugs. So Marilyn begins 1955 in New York. She's Crit Fox. She's set up her own company to make her

movies, but first she's going back to school. She joins the prestigious actor studio in February

95. The schools run by Lee Strasberg and his wife Paula, they're big believers in method

acting, a technique where an actor seeks total immersion in a part.

We've talked already about Marilyn's nerves and her anxiety about acting in the previous episode.

And although she's got lots of praise and success from directors and the general public,

they're still there and in fact that anxiety will never go away.

So in fact, Marilyn says when she enrols with the actor studio, I knew how third rate I was.

I could actually feel my lack of talent as if it were cheap clothes I was wearing inside.

But my God, how I want to learn to change and to improve.

This move towards method acting is a really serious attempt to raise the stakes,

...