Nina Arianda’s history with I Love Lucy stretches back long before she was even born. “When my family came to the United States, there was one family member, an uncle who was the only one who had a television,” the actress and daughter of Ukrainian immigrants tells David Canfield on this week’s episode of the Little Gold Men podcast. “And so once a week, the entire family would gather at his house and they would watch I Love Lucy. I mean, nobody spoke English, so I think it just goes to show the strength and the power of the series.”
That power is on vivid display in Being the Ricardos, the new film from Aaron Sorkin starring Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball, fighting to maintain control of her hit show as well as her faltering marriage to Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem). Like so many Sorkin heroines, Kidman’s Lucy is juggling a lot, from her second pregnancy to a rumor going around in the press that she is a Communist. And then there’s Vivian Vance, Ball’s real-life friend and co-star as Ethel Mertz, the dowdy counterpart to fireplug Lucy. As played by Arianda, Vance emerges more like her real-life self—glamorous and self-assured, but constantly overshadowed in the second banana role that has made her famous.
“Vivian was very much not is Ethel,” Arianda says. “I didn’t know that. This is a woman who had an extensive and successful theater career. She was a very famous torch singer. She was a leading lady. She was this ingenue. Then having known that, it makes so much sense, this sort of frustration and struggle that she has in the story and the film and then playing Ethel.”
On this week’s Little Gold Men podcast, Arianda gets into her experience on the set of Being the Ricardos and working with her on-screen faux husband J.K. Simmons, who plays William Frawley. Vance and Frawley famously clashed on the set of I Love Lucy, and for Arianda, Simmons provided his own challenge: “It really is difficult to dislike J.K. I think it’s impossible not to love him. He’s such a fantastic gentleman and what a brilliant playmate.”
Elsewhere on the episode, hosts David Canfield, Rebecca Ford, Richard Lawson, and Katey Rich look back at 1961’s West Side Story, both assessing it next to Steven Spielberg’s remake and its status as one of the most widely loved best picture Oscar winners of all time. And Julie Miller shares her interview with Spencer director Pablo Larrain and star Kristen Stewart, who walk her through the making of some of the film’s standout scenes and surprising ending, as well as what they learned about the real behind-the-scenes machinations of royal life.
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