Being the Ricardos

When word got out that Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem would be playing Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos, many scratched their heads: Kidman isn’t exactly the spitting image of Ball, and Bardem isn’t exactly Cuban. Turns out, the actors were a bit confused by the casting themselves. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Kidman and Bardem said they actually tried to get out of the film before shooting began. “I wasn’t aware of how big it was,” Bardem, who grew up in Spain, said of I Love Lucy, Ball and Arnaz’s sitcom-inventing television show. The actor mostly knew of Arnaz from his music with Spanish musician Xavier Cugat. “When I really started digging into him, the deeper I got, the more I knew how iconic [the show] was … i...