How accurate is 'Being the Ricardos'? We break down what's fact and what's fiction
At the height of "I Love Lucy," TV's insanely popular '50s sitcom starring real-life spouses Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, the Red Scare nearly brought down Hollywood's most famous redhead. Or did it?
Two years into the sitcom's run, at the height of Ball's reign as America's sweetheart, the actress was questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee in its attempt to hunt out Americans suspected to have ties to the Communist Party during the Cold War era.
The revelation of Ball's link to the party threatened to bring down the beloved funnywoman, as it had the careers of other luminaries — and it now fuels much of the narrative of Aaron Sorkin's "Being the Ricardos." Now available to stream on Amazon Prime, the film takes place during a dramatized week of production on "I Love Lucy" in 1952 as Ball's suspected ties to communism were under investigation by HUAC. It sets off Sorkin's narrative, which condenses the timeline with other critical moments the couple faced — Ball's pregnancy with son Desi Arnaz Jr. and mounting speculation about Arnaz's infidelity — to capture a complex portrait of a beloved marriage under duress.
