“What have I done?”: Nicole Kidman’s cold feet on playing Lucy

Not long after agreeing to star as Lucille Ball in Being the Ricardos, Nicole Kidman started having second thoughts.

“Initially when I said yes to it, I did not realise what I was saying yes to,” she reveals.

“I was saying yes to an Aaron Sorkin script and a great opportunity.

“Maybe a week later, it hit me. I was trying to work on little baby steps into her voice and it was nowhere within reach. And I was like, ‘Oh, no, what have I done? I wish I had the talent to do this, but I don’t.’ Then it was like, ‘Help!’

“Luckily, I had a couple of months, so I could work on it slowly, meticulously, methodically, watching the show, listening to the voice -doing all of the preparation, which is very unusual for me, because a lot of times I’ll start, really, inside. But the inside of it was almost already there just because I could relate to her. I could feel her, it was so beautifully written.”

Aaron Sorkin’s script hangs largely around a single week in the life of I Love Lucy‘s second season, where a confluence of events encircles Lucille Ball and producer, husband and co-star Desi Arnaz.

Kidman’s casting in the role did not come without some criticism, but she is already winning plaudits for her performance as the pioneering comedian / producer. Despite her own reservations, Sorkin backed his leading lady throughout a COVID-impacted shoot.

“I don’t want an impersonation”

“He sent an email that was just basically ‘You’ve got this. You’re just going to have to take it day by day. I don’t want an impersonation, I want you to do the work that you can do, that I know you will do. I want you not to freak out, because I believe you can do it.’ And I would challenge him on that at different points throughout the thing but he would never waver.

“I’d be begging for some sort of nose or chin. At one point. I was like, ‘I gotta change my jaw. Her jaw is different.’ He said, ‘I don’t care.’ I mean, it was frustrating for him, I think, because he saw how he wanted it and it took me time to give over to that.”

Co-star Javier Bardem, who plays the Cuban-American fighting studio heads, says his way into the character was Arnaz’s savvy approach to business.

“He was making fun of everything”

“His absolute confidence in himself,” he explains, “…how supportive he was of his wife and the whole show and how he overcame the obstacles by a strong sense of humour. He was making fun of everything. That doesn’t mean that he didn’t take it seriously, but he didn’t get stuck in the drama of it all.

“(The film) really reunites lots of aspects of them, as a marriage, as a couple, as artists, as colleagues. Everything is so well put together. That makes it more exciting to perform it but also to watch it as an audience. It’s full of different details. It gives you a good idea of who they were and what they were doing, back in the day.”

The film is co-produced by daughter Lucie Arnaz (pictured below). In the key roles of sitcom stars Vivian Vance and William Frawley are Nina Arianda and J.K. Simmons, respectively (pictured above).

Both were challenged to research their characters, with limited resources outside of I Love Lucy footage available.

“Vivian was a wonderful dancer… and Ethel was Ethel”

“Vivian was a wonderful dancer. She was a leading lady, she was an ingenue. And Ethel was Ethel,” explains Arianda.

“I had all the research I could possibly want for Ethel obviously, but for Vivian it was a little tougher. A producer had sent me a clip a couple of seconds long, and it was simply Desi introducing Vivian Vance to the to the audience right before they were taping. It was really eye-opening for me, because out came this woman with a long spine, her shoulders back and she sashayed downstage and took a graceful bow and left. I just saw a completely different woman. I became so obsessed with her background, and how did this spine develop? So I guess for me, it was really trying to be as respectful as I could of these two very different bodies.”

“In a way I found that to be sort of freeing”

“In a way I found that to be sort of freeing, in terms of how I portrayed off-camera Bill, which is 98% of the movie,” said Simmons. “He was, honestly not all that dissimilar from the cranky landlord, Fred Mertz. But the beauty of the gift that we all got from Aaron Sorkin in this script -and in his direction along the way- there were so many beautifully detailed layers for all of us. We got to see multiple aspects of all of these characters as they relate to each other at different times.”

Simmons adds,”I love that this movie is not just about Lucy and Desi as business partners, trailblazing business partners I have to say, but also shows them as a married couple dealing with stuff.”

“It’s not that kind of storytelling”

“As JK said, ‘Aren’t you glad it’s not from birth til death?’ It’s not that kind of storytelling,” Kidman observes.

“It’s Aaron Sorkin storytelling, where he compresses a number of things into a week, and then flashing forward and back is able to show the essence of who this woman was, and who these people were.

“That was what was so unusual about it, actually. It wasn’t a biopic. When I was sent it originally …. I couldn’t put it down. The screenplay is extraordinary.”

Being the Ricardos screens Tuesday on Amazon Prime Video.