Nicole Kidman cast as Lucille Ball!!!

This had Cate Blanchett originally attached. What went wrong?

HARD PASS!

No! Lucy did not have Botox and Nicole can’t do comedy!

Can we get a break from her?

Nicole failed with Grace Kelly! Enough!

That hilarious comedienne, Nicole Kidman

R2 I co-sign on the hard pass. Absolutely ridiculous. Insulting even.

No. Just no. Next they’ll cast Hugh Grant as Desi.

Kidman is a horrible. At least get someone with comedic timing that looks like Lucy.

Yeah, I couldn’t. Skin drawing thought. She is so ugly now with what she does to her face.

*skin crawling

Can’t wait! Not sure why, but can’t wait!

Is Nicole just going through classic sitcom actors -- 1st Bewitched, now I Love Lucy. What's next, I Dream of Jeannie?

Deb Messing must be fuming.

I'm with R12, I like it.

#teamnicolericardo

Has been done so much better years ago on MAD TV.

R13 how about a gender-flipped remake where Nicole is Andy Griffith and Paul Giamatti is Aunt Bee? Opie could be played by the little girl from Black-ish and Barney Fife is now Belinda Fife played by Tiffany Haddish.

It was a Desilu production!

NO THANKS! FUCK OFF, HOLLYWOOD!

Nicole is much too old to play Jeannie, or her sister, Jeannie.

note Lucie and Desi Jr. among the executive producers, so the family is behind it

This casting is like when Ann Ramsey wanted Sandy in the film Grease.

[...]

What a dumb idea. It'll be a lot of smoking, arguing, studio lights, and bongo drums.

Nicole wants Katie Holmes for Vivian Vance.

James Corden as William Frawley!

R22 Au contraire, an A-list cast can entirely delight an audience. Witness this cast which skillfully created a delightful documentary farce of a B'way musical.

Meryl Streep as Mrs. Trumble.

I hope it's a gritty remake where the Technicolor antics of the Ricardos and Mertzes is just an elaborate fantasy life for Lucy McGillicuddy, tragic street drunk.

This Will End in Tears (TM).

breezin along

Nicole could star in a remake of Stone Pillow. Make it a musical this time.

She had better not ever attempt to play Mrs. Cunningham.

Two hours of "ohhh Lucy" or that awful whining that Lucy did. Will the picture also show Lucy as a not very nice person.

Dear god, I cant see this at all. What were they thinking of?

Did Cate Blanchett leave or was she fired?

Nicole has too much Botox to do Lucy's spider face.

They couldn't find a real Cuban?

I wonder if Sorkin looked at the Mrs. America series Blanchett did for Hulu and thought: "meh"

And then Nicole got huge ratings for the awful Undoing and Prom and he thought she'd be a bigger draw.

When are we getting Nicole Kidman's Mame?

They are both too old.

Except, r40, Lucy and Desi both looked well into their 50s during ILL.

What I'll be curious about is if Nicole has to undergo some kind of "relaxing" of her face to get the properly worn out look.

Is she playing the Here’s Lucy marionette?

I would not want to be Deb Messing's family tonight.

[quote]Monday table read through Friday audience filming— when Lucy and Desi face a crisis that could end their careers and another that could end their marriage.

Viv is a tranny and Desi's been fucking him/her up the ass in the broom closet for three seasons.

If they're smart, the movie's story would take place within the confines of the taping of the last Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour show.

I'm guessing from the article that the big conflict in the film will be the accusations that Lucy was a Communist. Of course, any week of filming was probably rife with accusations of Desi's infidelity.

The episode they filmed that week of the Commie mishigoss was the one where Lucy and Ethel buy a dress shop, though I'm sure they could choose any ILL episode and it wouldn't matter.

The dress shop episode is a good one. The whole thing could work, script-wise, but the casting is just terrible.

I think Amy Poehler could be good as Viv.

Javier Bardem is a great actor but terrible casting. Only Oscar Isaac could play Desi.

Twitter says Raul Esparza which I think is a good suggestion.

Raul is fat enough to play Fred these days.

Cate would’ve been AMAZING. Wig doesn’t excite me.

[quote] I'm guessing from the article that the big conflict in the film will be the accusations that Lucy was a Communist.

Prepare for 2+ hours of constipated looks and lots of sighing.

The only thing red about Lucy is her hair and that's not even real!

And then cut to Nicole staring adoringly at Javier from behind the kitchen set.

[quote]I would not want to be Deb Messing's family tonight.

Would you want to be them on any other night?

[quote]It was a Desilu production!

No, it wasn't.

Uh, when I Love Lucy was first produced Danny Thomas was a cheap nightclub comic and Sheldon Leonard was still playing two-bit gangsters in B films.

Uh, when I Love Lucy was first produced Danny Thomas was a cheap nightclub comic and Sheldon Leonard was still playing two-bit gangsters in B films.

An Aaron Sorkin takedown of the Ricardos?

How tedious.

r57 We were referring to the "Andy Griffith Show", not "I Love Lucy."

r61, how would we know as you didn't link the post.

Tsk, tsk.

This will not end well. I guarantee.

Because this is produced by her kids, it will be terrible.

Lucille Ball was much more beautiful IMO

Andy Griffith was shot on the Desilu lot, my mistake.

The more I think of it, the more I like this idea of a limited series about the behind the scenes reality of a famous tv show. Not with any of the people attached or even Lucy necessarily but part of the allure of Feud and The Crown was seeing another side of something we assumed we knew well. Cheers would probably benefit from this kind of treatment, maybe Dallas. It's also a great way to get younger viewers interested in old content that's just sitting around not making money.

Agree with you r66, but I always have a real problem seeing these famous actors played by famous actors. I can't lose Renee Zellweger, Jessica Lange, Susan Sarandon, Nicole Kidman, et.al. as they attempt to create an iconic celebrity.

This is probably why The Crown works so well for me....I don't know most of the actors who play those famous people.

Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball? What the fuck?

[quote]What a dumb idea. It'll be a lot of smoking, arguing, studio lights, and bongo drums.

And that's just on the set!

[quote]Except, [R40], Lucy and Desi both looked well into their 50s during ILL.

Lucy actually still looked pretty youthful in the 50s. It wasn't until the 60s that her face got hard and brittle-looking.

I'm sorry Javier Bardem is involved in this surefire disaster.

I hope he doesn't allow himself to become a bland nonentity in La-La-Land like poor Antonio Banderas did.

Poor Antonio married a bland Plastic-Woman just like the bland Plastic-Woman who's starring in this surefire disaster.

Frances Fisher proved that while Lucy can never be duplicated, she can be imitated.

Her re-enacting Lucy Ricardo dodging 'murderous' Ricky in the kitchen with the trash can lid as a bullet proof 'vest' was brilliant.

This Will End in Yet Another Unconvincing Curly Red Wig.

Too bad Gary is dead and can’t Nicole out of it.

I will be playing Lucy as a young girl, fresh from Jamestown, NY.

Has everyone forgotten my 2003 movie?

While Sorkin is the author of many, many funny lines (The West Wing is full of them), he seems just to not get comedy as a genre. I'm one of the few who thought Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was a terrific show, but the one criticism of it that was indisputably true was that none of the sketches we saw on the show-within-a-show was funny, and Sarah Paulson had little to no comic talent as its lead.

Now Blanchett and Kidman, both actors with a very poor sense of comedy, and I'd have thought both too old for the project. If you want an Australian who CAN do high-energy comedy, there's Isla Fisher and Margot Robbie for starters. Fisher doesn't even require hair dye.

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How about Mark Consuelos as Desi? Just an idea. Poor, Javier.

Nicole is an old ass lady. I can’t stand to see her play someone in their 30’s with young kids or whatnot.

Lucy was in her 40s during the ILL days, not her 30s, r80.

Nicole and Javier.....There are no words.

Sorkin’s media is uneven. If I recall correctly, he produced an HBO series The Newsroom. I tried to get into it, but the writing was cheesy and preachy, with some implausible plot devices. You could hear tired “rants” sort of randomly crafted into dialogue that sounded really preachy and sanctimonious. I understand it improved in its second season, but wasn’t interested enough to revisit it. There was a smirking mediocrity to the production. But maybe this sort of period docudrama could work better, or he could be chasing the success of Ryan Murphy’s Feud and programs like it.

Man, Nicole’s hair is looking like straw. So dry. And her skin looks plastic. Why’s she always frowning?

That’s a wig, right?

Miscasting

I don't know how to link it but there's a follow-up article now (I think on Dateline) saying Deb Messing has reached out to fans to plead with Sorkin to cast her before Nicole signs on the dotted line.

Couldn’t Keith Urban talk her out of it?

This vapid article was written by the vapid Justin Kroll

And it’s going straight to Amazon? Gross. No one will even see it. This should NEVER be made.

For all the Deb Messing jokes, she'd be better in this role than Kidman

Debra as Lucy.

Debra doing the Vitameatavegamin Commercial

Debs needs to work on her voice a bit but the rest of her execution is downright brilliant.

Wig wouldn’t even be able to pull off a Messing impersonation.

She looks like she's been made up for her viewing at the mortuary, and not a very good job, at that.

R95 Kidman’s already shooting this?!

Deb really could have used a much stronger waist cincher there at r93.

This bitch.

I'd like to see Deb do it and yet this still seems cuntish.

I'm probably the only gay on the planet who did not watch Will and Grace in its later years and thus never saw the I Love Lucy parody.

So, out of curiosity, I just watched a bit of Deb's portrayal as Lucy. And while it's great fun, she's so over the top with her mugging (no doubt egged on by the producers and writers), I can't imagine it wouldn't scare Aaron Sorkin (and Lucie and Desi Jr., too) away from ever hiring her for his film. Sad, because probably with decent direction, she'd be great.

I had no great opinion of this Messing woman until the last couple of years when I was turned off by their publicity-seeking, off-screen, SJW antics.

R101, she's probably turned off by your MAGAt, pro Klan, self-hating antics.

I believe actors and actresses are there to impersonate characters written by writers.

They're not politicians.

R103, if you have the right to voice your political opinions, so does she. Funny how freepers don't have a problem with Clint Eastwood, Scott Baio, etc sharing their political views

More like Lucille Ballz

Mark Conseulos is a good call. And how about that bug eyed girl for Lucy- Emma Stone.

Does Nicole Kidman have to be cast in every single fucking movie? She shouldn't do biopics. She absolutely ruined the Arbus movie. That was terrible, appalling bordering on offensive miscasting and this probably won't be much better.

[quote] offensive miscasting

This Plastic Woman offends me at first sight. She is, unfortunately, ubiquitous.

My nickname for her is: Constipation Sighs.

Did she run out of the "sexy, young mother" roles she favors?

Nicole can't do zany. Certainly not like Lucy could. It will have to be a drama regarding the later portions of her personal life. Hopefully not too dead-end depressing like the recent 'Judy' which Liza rightfully trashed.

[quote]I'm probably the only gay on the planet who did not watch Will and Grace in its later years

I gave up on Will and Grace during its original run. I thought it was a dumb show except for Megan Mullaly, who was genuinely funny, but not worth watching the whole show for.

lucie arnaz thinks havin this big name fuktard will get ratings....honey she is joke !!!! and so is u!

I think this is filming on Park Ave. Before I left the city the city to work from home in March I used to see the trailers on Park just below Grand Central. I was in the city again a couple of weeks ago and saw them again. There were trailer doors with “Lucy” and “Desi” on them.

Kidman doesn’t look anything like Ball. You know who would do a good job? Nicole Sullivan! She’s funny and she resembles Ball.

The Newsroom is not recent. It preceded Feud by many years.

From what I have read, Lucie & Desi, Jr. were involved with casting, so I guess they feel that Nicole can play Lucy. But I think r115 would have been a good choice too, especially since she did Lucy on the MadTV sketches.

No one needs all the backstage drama (and lines) washed-up, subpar B-lister Debra would bring. The people involved are too accomplished for that. And Debra couldn't even emulate the Lucy character when they tried shoving it down our throats during the W&B reboot. I hope she had a full-on meltdown, and I hope she continues to be available for a long time.

r117 = Susan Sarandon

Don't laugh, but I think Mario Lopez would be great as Desi. People forget how good he was as Greg Louganis.

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Lucille Ball was kind of a bitter bitch off screen. A movie about her sounds like torture .

(R121) Exactly, she was not a nice person. I couldn't stand that "Oh,Rickeeeeeeee" and certainly will not see the movie.

You would think the Grace Kelly fiasco would’ve taught her something.