Being the Ricardos

By Reggie's Take on October 19, 2021

Amazon Prime Video has released the first teaser trailer for Aaron Sorkin’s drama about real-life couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Being the Ricardos.

Being the Ricardos, chronicles five days in September of 1952 as the cast and crew get ready for the episode, “Fred and Ethel Fight,” about Lucy’s efforts to reunite the Mertzes when they look headed for a split. During the production of the episode, Lucy, and Desi deal with three major crises off screen, which include Lucy’s investigation by the House of Un-American Activities Committee for ties to Communism and Desi’s tabloid cover story entitled “Desi’s Wild Night Out.”

Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed the film, but got input on the script and casting from Lucie Arnaz, the daughter of Lucy and Desi. Arnaz who has seen the movie said watching it was “very emotional,” due to the difficult aspects of her parents’ marriage.

Sorkin recently talked about the movie in an online interview and what inspired him to pull the curtain back on one of the most influential television sitcoms of all time, I Love Lucy.

“The only thing better than a story people don’t know is a story that people think they know but they’re wrong. The producer Todd Black spent over a year having meetings with me to tell me stories about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz that I’d never heard. For instance, that Lucy was accused of being a Communist. There were plenty of points of friction, and that’s what I look for when I want to tell a story. I had this structural idea that appealed to me. I like claustrophobic spaces; I like claustrophobic segments of time. So I thought if I could tell the story during one production week of I Love Lucy — Monday table read through Friday audience taping — and tell it mostly on that soundstage, that there might be something good there. So I tried writing it.”

Sorkin also talked about what made him choose the episode “Fred and Ethel Fight,” to focus on during the film?

“I read a bunch of episodes, a bunch of I Love Lucy scripts. Why did I choose this one? I’m trying to say it without giving anything away… There’s a problem with the script that Lucy keeps returning to throughout rehearsal, and I liked that so I just kind of grabbed that one, thinking, “Well if this doesn’t work, I’ll choose a different one.” But it did.”

Cast: Nicole Kidman as Lucy, Javier Bardem as Desi, J.K. Simmons, Alia Shawkat, Jake Lacy, Clarke Gregg, Nelson Franklin, John Rubinstein, Linda Lavin, Robert Pine, and Christopher Denham

Being the Ricardos opens in theaters on December 10 and on Prime Video on December 21.

Being the Ricardos Official Synopsis:

Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) are threatened by shocking personal accusations, a political smear and cultural taboos in Academy Award®-winning writer and director Aaron Sorkin’s behind-the-scenes drama Being the Ricardos. A revealing glimpse of the couple’s complex romantic and professional relationship, the film takes audiences into the writers’ room, onto the soundstage and behind closed doors with Ball and Arnaz during one critical production week of their groundbreaking sitcom “I Love Lucy.”

To read more of the interview with Aaron Sorkin you can head over to EW.