Being the Ricardos (2021) on Netflix
In 1953, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz prepare an episode of I Love Lucy. A radio report about her past and a pregnancy the network won't allow on air complicate the taping.
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- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.5/1047,509 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes68%
Trailer
Plot summary
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz make I Love Lucy through their own company, and Arnaz designs the three-camera setup that lets East Coast viewers watch live while a studio audience sits in. Nearly 60 million people tune in each week. In 1953 the couple prepares a new episode. Ball battles the show's writers and directors over her exacting standards, and William Frawley, often drunk, and Vivian Vance, who dislikes Ball's efforts to play down her looks, bring their own friction to the set. Walter Winchell's radio program claims it has evidence of Communist ties, alarming the crew. Ball says that as a young woman she registered with the party, and that a relative had influenced her. She is expecting the couple's second child, and CBS will not permit the word on the air.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Being the Ricardos (2021)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- By January 2021, Cate Blanchett had dropped out of the project, with Nicole Kidman in negotiations to replace her and Javier Bardem in negotiations to portray Desi Arnaz; Kidman's casting drew social-media controversy, but Lucie Arnaz defended it.
- One of the film's key tenets, that Desi Arnaz had personal issues with Communism because his family had been "kicked out of Cuba because of Communism", was incorrect: the Cuban Revolution did not take over the island until 1959, and the Arnaz family had migrated to the United States in 1933 after the "Revolt of the Sergeants".
- The casting of a European actor, Javier Bardem, to play the Cuban-American Desi Arnaz drew a more negative reception; director Aaron Sorkin defended it, saying that having an actor born in Spain play a character born in Cuba was not demeaning.
- The production canceled filming at Chateau Marmont due to backlash against the establishment, dropping one of its planned locations.
