Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem almost backed out of ‘Being the Ricardos' a month before shooting began.
Nicole Kidman almost quit Lucille Ball role
The Academy Award winning actress, 54, takes on the role Lucille Ball, while 52-year-old Javier plays her husband and co-star Desi Arnaz in the biopic about the sitcom actress.
Javier said: "I wasn’t aware of how big [I Love Lucy] was. When I really started digging into him, the deeper I got, the more I knew how iconic [the show] was … it was like, ‘S**t!"
His thoughts were echoed by Nicole, who admitted she was "frightened" at the thought of playing the iconic actress.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, she said: "[I thoguht]s**t what did we do?" I got frightened."
The two actors then reportedly set up a Zoom meeting with the producers, urging them to postpone the project for a year, with producer Todd Black adding: "I was like, ‘Oh my God, this whole thing’s falling apart. "
However, according to reports, production company Amazon were "eager to meet a voracious appetite for content during the pandemic, wanted the movie to move forward as soon as possible", which meant that the shooting schedule would go ahead as planned.
Upon hearing the news, Kidman recalled: "So then it was like, 'Oh, no. Oh, no. We actually have to do this.'"
Todd Black said of the movie: "They are a truly iconic couple with a huge hit TV show. And there’s no way that you can’t say, ‘Wow, how did that work when the cameras weren’t rolling? When they were fighting and they had to do the show?’ There’s no way that there wasn’t a movie in it.”
Tagged in Javier Bardem Nicole Kidman Lucille Ball