For a generation that has grown up watching the ageless American sitcom ‘I Love Lucy’ in black-and-white on Doordarshan, there’s an opportunity coming to relive those days of innocent laughter.
Nicole Kidman will play the comedienne Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem will reprise her husband and co-star Desi Arnez in Aaron Sorkin’s Amazon Studios movie ‘Being the Ricardos’.
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.”
On Tuesday, the production house dropped the movie’s trailer, which pans through a week in the life of the couple who kept audiences, both live in the studio and in their living rooms, in splits in 180 episodes aired on the American network, CBS, between 1951 and 1957.
In the trailer, according to ‘Variety’, quick glimpses of the couple’s whirlwind life are shown accompanied by Kidman’s voiceover, with the first clear look at Kidman coming via the recreation of Lucille Ball’s iconic grape stomping scene.
‘Variety’ quotes Kidman as stating that the biopic will not be a remake of ‘I Love Lucy’. “The strange thing about Lucille Ball is that everyone thinks we’re remaking the ‘I Love Lucy’ show, and it’s so not that,” the actress said. “It’s about Lucy and Desi and their relationship and their marriage. It’s very deep, actually.”
‘Being the Ricardos’ also navigates the racial barriers the couple had to face, with Desi being discriminated against for being Cuban, and Lucille fighting for him to remain on the show. The film has been penciled in for a December 10 theatrical release and a Prime Video release date of December 21.
