'Lucy and Desi': A conversation with Amy Poehler and Lucie Arnaz
Before Amy Poehler was attached to direct a new documentary from Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment about the first couple of television — Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz — the original idea was to explore Ball's achievements as a performer and businesswoman who shattered the glass ceiling.
But Lucie Arnaz, Ball and Arnaz's daughter, who has long managed her parents' estate, wasn't keen on the estate entering the partnership under that framing.
"I said, 'That's not gonna fly with us,'" recalls Arnaz, who was also involved in the making of the recent biopic "Being the Ricardos." "It seemed disingenuous because my mother didn't really enjoy that. And she didn't ask for that. She didn't want that. And she got rid of that as quick as she could. So I said: If you start up that road, you're gonna hit a wall. We finally decided what the focus should be — the relationship between the two of them and how brilliant it was, and this amazing thing they created. But how come they couldn't make it work? Because they did stay together [as] soulmates for a long, long time — until they died, basically."
When Howard finally did approach Poehler about her interest in directing it, the multihyphenate funnywoman wondered how she could find her way into the beloved "I Love Lucy" couple who have received plenty of appraisal in various formats through the decades. Arnaz had even contributed to the catalog nearly 30 years ago with a scrapbook film called "Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie" featuring interviews with the family and friends who knew her parents the best.
"There's been lots and lots of coverage of Lucy and Desi," says Poehler. "So it was really about: What would be a new way in or a way that, creatively, felt like the right thing?"
Her solution became focused on deconstructing the outsized "icon" and "trailblazer"
