The first teaser trailer for writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos, a showbiz drama about real-life couple Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, has been unveiled by Amazon Prime Video. The film will dramatize an intense week in Lucille and Desi’s lives as they enter production on an episode of their hit sitcom I Love Lucy in 1952 — from the table read to the taping — while off-screen drama threatens to engulf their personal lives.
While the teaser doesn’t really have the rat-a-tat dialogue that the Oscar-winning writer is known for, Lucille goes on a trademark Sorkin rant as she dumps exposition in an almost action-packed manner. In her narration, Lucille talks about being at the top of her game and says that she did the show only to be closer to Desi. “I had no idea it was going to be a hit,” she declares, as the first glimpse of a transformed Nicole Kidman is revealed.
For Being the Ricardos, Sorkin appears to be using a similar framing device to the one he utilized in the unconventional Steve Jobs biopic that he wrote for director Danny Boyle — the story is about three major events that the couple deals with in one week of production, ranging from a scandalous magazine article about Desi’s infidelity to the accusations of being a Communist that were hurled at Lucille.
The writer-director spoke about the inception of the project in an interview with EW, and said:
"The only thing better than a story people don't know is a story that people think they know but they're wrong. The producer Todd Black spent over a year having meetings with me to tell me stories about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz that I'd never heard. For instance, that Lucy was accused of being a Communist. There were plenty of points of friction, and that's what I look for when I want to tell a story. I had this structural idea that appealed to me. I like claustrophobic spaces; I like claustrophobic segments of time. So I thought if I could tell the story during one production week of I Love Lucy — Monday table read through Friday audience taping — and tell it mostly on that soundstage, that there might be something good there. So I tried writing it."
This is Sorkin’s second streaming release in row, after The Trial of the Chicago 7, which was offloaded by Paramount to Netflix last year. The film earned six nominations at the 93rd Academy Awards. Like The Trial of the Chicago 7, Being the Ricardos will also get a limited theatrical run before hitting streaming.
The cast also includes Javier Bardem as Desi, as well as J.K. Simmons, Alia Shawkat, Jake Lacy, Clarke Gregg, Nelson Franklin, John Rubinstein, Linda Lavin, Robert Pine, and Christopher Denham.The film is coming to theaters on December 10 and on Prime Video on December 21. You can watch the trailer here: