Sorkin has taken one of America’s funniest and most beloved TV couples, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, and turned it into a poignant story for a film. The Ricardos first appeared in the iconic sitcom I Love Lucy, which premiered in 1951.
In front of our TV sets, we saw a quintessential dizzy redhead and the charismatic Cuban bandleader, delighting record-breaking audiences each week. They’d see Lucy’s hare-brained schemes and hilarious antics.
Behind the scenes was a different story. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz faced problems that could have ended the successful show and their marriage. Kidman talks about Lucille Ball’s career and portrays her, “As an actress, she never really got a break when she was younger. Movies were not her métier. But that is part of what made her resilient. She, with Desi’s support and protection, reinvented herself as a comedy star. But it was all so tenuous and could be taken away by a couple of cheap headlines. That is still very relevant today.”
Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Being the Ricardos follows Lucille Ball, played by Nicole Kidman, and Desi Arnaz, played by Javier Bardem, as they face a crisis. They face the devastating fact that they most likely will end their careers and marriage. Lucy and Desi must deal with the impending threats of shocking personal accusations, political smears, and cultural taboos.
The film clip is like the trailer, but we see more of Kidman as Lucy and Bardem as Dezi.
We go behind the scenes of one of the most popular TV shows of our time, revealing a glimpse of the couple’s complex romantic and professional relationship. During one critical production week of their groundbreaking sitcom, “I Love Lucy,” we go into the writer’s room, onto the soundstage and behind closed doors with Lucy and Desi.
Having two Oscar winners play the lead roles of two influential personalities in the entertainment industry must be a dream come true for Sorkin.
The cast includes Jake Lacy, J. K. Simmons, Nina Arianda, Tony Hale and Alia Shawkat.
Sorkin says, “Javier made it clear he wanted the part. And he is simply irresistible. I didn’t need to be told he’s a great actor. We were finishing casting during the COVID lockdown and he was so winning, even during Zoom meetings. That quality was essential for Desi because we asked the audience to accept such bad behavior from him. Until the day he died, he was intensely in love with Lucille Ball, but he came from a culture that defines manhood very narrowly. It was hard for Desi to be a second banana, and that ultimately killed their marriage.”
Bardem calls Sorkin’s script “a love letter to two resilient, creative human beings dealing with serious problems and trying to remain united through them,” adding, “It is a journey of pleasure and joy and laughter — a lot of laughter. There are great comic moments in it. But there are also dramatic, emotional moments that show that these people who were so loved and admired were just a couple of human beings with flaws — as we all are.”
The actor says it was typical for the cast to perform five or more pages of the writer’s notoriously precise dialogue daily. “There are always two or three or four things happening at the same time,” he says. “As a director, Aaron likes to work fast. He knows what he wants, which is a great thing, but he leaves you the room to play with it. And he gives you a lot of layers to work with.”
Despite the many personal and professional successes the couple achieves, Desi’s philandering threatens to destroy the couple’s marriage at the peak of their fame. “He wanted to help Lucille, protect her, hold her — not only because she was the star of the show but because she was his wife, the mother of his kids and an amazing, creative mind,” says Bardem. “But there were many things that he could have done better.”
It was Arnaz’s ambition and versatility that the actor says provided him with the most inspiration. “When we play real people, we want to get as close as we can to reality, but there’s a moment where you have to let that go,” he believes. “You have to express what the person is going through, not how he looks or speaks. Desi had a motor inside of him that constantly pushed forward, pushed not only himself but the show and the whole Desilu company.”
For the role of Arnaz, one of the rare Latinx talents to achieve stardom in television’s early days, the filmmakers cast Academy Award winner Javier Bardem. The actor had pursued the role for years before the film was green-lit.
Bardem describes his co-star, Kidman, as “generous, caring, organic, fun to work with, fun to watch, inspiring — and she makes it all look easy. She gives you everything, so you don’t have to hold anything back.”
