Minecraft but I DESTROY PARKOUR CIVILIZATION 
With writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos now playing in select theaters and streaming on Prime Video, I recently got to speak with Nina Arianda and J.K. Simmons about playing Vivian Vance and William Frawley. If you haven’t seen the trailers, Being the Ricardos dramatizes an intense week for Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem) 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 drama that happens in the movie is true, it didn’t all happen in the same week. Sorkin has previously explained how he came to this storyline:
“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.”
During the interview, Arianda and Simmons talked about why they loved Sorkin’s script, what they learned about I Love Lucy and Lucille Ball that they didn’t know, how the script takes the I Love Lucy line, “Honey, I’m home” and spins it so it has a whole new meaning, and more.
Being the Ricardos also stars Alia Shawkat, Jake Lacy, Clarke Gregg, Nelson Franklin, John Rubinstein, Linda Lavin, Robert Pine, and Christopher Denham. Watch what J.K. Simmons and Nina Arianda had to say in the player above and exactly what we talked about is listed below. Look for more Being the Ricardos this week.
J.K. Simmons and Nina Arianda
If someone has never seen anything they’ve done before, what is the first thing they should watch and why?
What did they love about Sorkin’s script and what did they learn making the film that they didn’t know?
How the script takes the I Love Lucy line, “Honey, I’m home” and spins it so it has a whole new meaning.
#JKSimmons #NinaArianda #BeingtheRicardos
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