Everybody loved I Love Lucy, a TV show so popular that, as we are reminded in the new film Being the Ricardos, audiences weren’t going anywhere that night of the week, the show averaging 60 million viewers each episode, basically a 90% share at that time (the 50s). The film, written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, reminds us also about the relationship between American comedienne Lucille Ball (played by Nicole Kidman) and Cuban husband Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem), partners extraordinaire in life and art, just before the Cuban revolution of 1959 would forever alter the relationship between the two countries. Being the Ricardos opens in limited release in U.S. theaters on December 10,  2021 and will start streaming on Amazon Prime starting December 21.

Alongside Kidman and Bardem are J.K. Simmons and Nina Arianda, playing the roles of Fred and Ethel Mertz that were originally played by William Frawley and Vivian Vance. Sorkin’s film shows Ball fighting with the writers to get perfect comic timing, the struggle to show her pregnancy on TV at a time when it was taboo, and the discovery of Desi’s infidelity which led to the end of their marriage. The film received the blessing of Ball and Arnaz’ two children, Desi and Lucie Arnaz, who are credited as executive producers. Sorkin and the entire cast accompanied the film to many of its openings, from New York to Los Angeles, showing a strong passion and genuine love for the project.

Kidman worried for a time about the huge responsibility of interpreting an icon such as Lucille Ball, yet she was extremely happy to be given the opportunity. “I heard that I was not the most popular choice, but Sorkin told me I couldn’t get out of it,” Kidman, laughing, told the audience at the Chinese Theatre following an industry screening. “Now I am very grateful. My performance is not an impression of Lucille but a reflection on the drama of making comedy. Lucille and Desi’s children saw the movie sitting next to me and my husband [Keith Urban], and I saw them crying, seeing their parents on the big screen. For me and Javier [Bardem], it was with no doubt a huge responsibility.”

“Lucy’s comedy was very physical,” Kidman added. “I spent a good couple months by myself just studying her physicality. When she moved, I could see her style and grace, and I had to change everything about my particular way of moving. And Aaron was very specific about wanting two different voices. He wanted a Lucy voice, and then he wanted Lucille’s voice and not Lucy’s voice. Lucille had a much deeper voice than Lucy’s voice.”

The subject was daunting also for the director. “It took me about 18 months to say yes to this one, to write a movie about the relationship between Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz,” said Sorkin at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica after the screening of his film organized by the American Cinematheque. “I knew I didn’t want to do a biopic. So, I came up with the idea of setting the whole story during one production week of I Love Lucy, from the Monday table read to the Friday audience taping. And I identified three large events: The Red Scare, as they called it, Lucy’s pregnancy, and Desi showing up on the cover of Confidential magazine with another woman and the headline ‘Desi’s Wild Night Out.’ Everything that happens in the movie happened, it just didn’t all happen in one week.”

“I would say that I was a passive fan of I Love Lucy,” Sorkin continues. “If you grew up in this country in those years and you had eyes and ears, it was impossible not to be familiar with the show. When word got out that I was writing the movie, I realized that there are still many people with an intense relationship with these characters. They’re fully invested in Lucy and her marriage to Ricky. To the point that they really have a hard time separating the actors from their characters. One of the things I was looking forward to with this movie was showing the actors in a way we were not familiar with. None of them were anything like the characters they were playing. They don’t even look like the characters. Lucille Ball doesn’t look like Lucy Ricardo, Vivian doesn’t look like Ethel, or Desi like Ricky. And on and on.”