With Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem in place to star as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in Being The Ricardos, writer/director Aaron Sorkin has started the cameras rolling in Los Angeles. He's also added JK Simmons, Tony Hale, Nina Arianda, Alia Shawkat, Clark Gregg, Robert Pine, John Rubenstein, Linda Lavin, Christopher Denham and Jake Lacy to the cast.
Ball and Arnaz were famously the stars behind the groundbreaking and classic 1950s television sitcom I Love Lucy, that focused on a happily married though seemingly mismatched couple – a flame-haired, accident-prone American housewife, and her sensible Cuban-American bandleader husband – that became the top-rated and most beloved show of the era. Being The Ricardos is set during one production week of the sitcom — Monday table read through Friday audience filming — when Lucy and Desi face a crisis that could end their careers and another that could end their marriage.
Simmons and Arianda are playing Lucy costars William Frawley and Vivian Vance, with Hale as the show's producer and head writer Jess Oppenheimer and Shawkat and Lacy as longtime writing partners Madelyn Pugh & Bob Carroll Jr, who worked on the series.
According to Lucie Arnaz, the main couple's daughter, and an executive producer on the film: "My brother Desi and I signed on because this is a story of our folk’s real-life passionate, tempestuous and complicated relationship and not a recreation of I Love Lucy – no one could do that. We felt exploring that relationship could be an enlightening challenge.
We asked Amazon for the best and we got it with every hire. Aaron Sorkin has not told this tale as a ‘cradle to grave’ biopic. Instead, he’s chosen to illuminate a snippet of time during an incredibly intense period of their show’s enduring success. The casting choices have all been inspired and Desi and I are so looking forward to seeing what this impressive group of actors make of Sorkin’s delicious script."