Everything Wrong With the Lucille Ball Biopic, According to Her Daughter
Being the Ricardos, a 2021 biopic about I Love Lucy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, earned three Oscar nominations and a Golden Globe win for star Nicole Kidman. But the Aaron Sorkin film didn’t win the full approval of two of the people who knew Ball and Arnaz best: Lucie Arnaz, the couple’s daughter, and Keith Thibodeaux, their I Love Lucy costar.
Lucie and Thibodeaux shared their frustrations with Being the Ricardos at the Lucie on the Lot event — a fundraiser benefitting the production of Dr. Sam, a film by Lucie’s friend and fellow I Love Lucy fan Raji Ahsan — at Paramount Studios on Thursday, June 5.
“Well, I was involved,” Lucie said, referring to her role as executive producer on Being the Ricardo. “And I tried to work on it and correct the incorrect parts, especially [Ball’s] relationship with the writers. She adored those people. They got along so well. None of that backstabbing, crazy, insulting stuff. That was such a crock of poop. It was so wrong.”
Lucie also objected to the “overly done” storyline involving actors Vivian Vance and William Frawley— the actors behind I Love Lucy neighbors Ethel and Fred Mertz, played in the movie by Nina Arianda and J.K. Simmons — and Vance’s issues with Frawley’s drinking.
But Lucie’s feedback went nowhere, apparently. “You know, you can’t talk to Aaron,” she told the crowd on Thursday. “He’s Aaron Sorkin and he would listen — ‘meaningful consultation’ — he would listen, but then he would say, ‘Well, what do you know? You were 15 months old.’”
As for Thibodeaux — one of the actors who played Lucy Ricardo and Ricky Rickardo’s son, Ricky Jr. — he said he was just asked about Being the Ricardos in an interview earlier that day. “They said, ‘What do you think about the movie?’ And I said, ‘You know, it’s well done and all that, but I just didn’t get it.”
“Thank you,” said actor Laurence Luckinbill, Lucie’s husband, with a nod of agreement.
Lucie previously spoke out about Being the Ricardos in a 2023 interview with The Palm Springs Post, saying she “wanted it to be as accurate as possible” but Sorkin “wasn’t really interested in the facts.”
She also said Sorkin was wrong to look for conflict on the set of I Love Lucy instead of elsewhere in her parents’ lives. “Trust me, there was plenty of conflict,” she said. “He just put the whole movie on the set of the show, where there was almost none. When they were there, things were Camelot!”
Despite her complaints, though, Lucie said in that interview that she “loved” the film, calling it “beautifully made” and deeming Kidman’s performance “terrific.”
But she did learn one lesson from the experience: “In your contract, make sure it says ‘approval,’ not ‘meaningful consultations,’” she told the newspaper with a laugh.
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