Lucy & Desi Redux
LONG BEFORE Sonny and Cher, there was Lucy and Ricky. Television’s original power couple – Lucille Ball and her Cubanborn husband, Desi Arnaz – burst onto TV screens 70 years ago as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on the sitcom I Love Lucy and, over the course of six ground-breaking seasons, delivered some of the most iconic and memorable moments in television history. (Vitameatavegamin anyone?)
Meanwhile, Ball and Arnaz, television’s first interethnic couple, proved just as powerful off screen, with Ball, as head of the pair’s Desilu Studios, shattering Tinseltown glass ceilings by becoming Hollywood’s first female studio boss.
And it’s the drama of that push and pull – the sitcom success, the behind-the-scenes power plays, the tumultuous marriage, all set against the sepia-tinted backdrop of the Golden Age of Television – that provides the foundation for Being the Ricardos.
The biopic, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, 60, will no doubt live and die on the portrayals of Ball and Arnaz, which is why the casting of Nicole Kidman, 54, and Javier Bardem, 52, had some diehard fans concerned.
In early trailers, Kidman looked more like the fifth runnerup in a Lucy lookalike contest, while Bardem bears no resemblance to Arnaz at all. And while the pair boasts the acting chops for the real-life drama, the question is whether they have the comedic ability to recreate famous I Love
Lucy scenes. (One trailer showed Kidman in a vat of grapes, recreating the classic 1956 episode, “Lucy’s Italian Movie.”)
For what it’s worth, the couple’s daughter, Lucie Arnaz – now 70 – raved about it after she screened the film, saying Kidman “became my mother’s soul,” and Bardem captured her father’s “essence,” even though he has a different profile and body shape. “Thank God they didn’t do exact lookalikes, I couldn’t have taken it,” Arnaz said in a video posted on Instagram.
Fans may be mollified by an upcoming, untitled documentary about Lucille Ball’s life, directed by comedian Amy Poehler. It was also praised by Arnaz, who trusted Poehler enough to give her complete access to the family archives.
Being the Ricardos is in theatres Dec. 10 and Amazon Prime on Dec. 21.