Photo: Glen Wilson/ Amazon Content Services LLC
ForNicole Kidman’s complete transformation intoLucille Ballto star in the new biopic,Being the Ricardos(alongsideJavier BardemasDesi Arnaz), the clothes were just as important to get right as the icon’s bright red hair and pencil-thin eyebrows. And for costume designer Susan Lyall, it’s a task she didn’t take lightly.
PEOPLE caught up with the costume pro to understand just what it took to completely create Ball’s on-screen look, and it turns out it was a three-step process.
Just like the prep Kidman, 54, put into developing her character (she spent"a ton of time" analyzing episodes), Lyall did the same with rewatching oldI Love Lucyreruns.
“I might have watched the Fred and Ethel Fight episode, in its entirety, maybe 15 times and then kept freezing frame and moving in closer and trying to suss out every detail of the costume, and the same with Lucy,” says Lyall. “I watched the grape stomping [scene] over and over and over again, to get every detail correct in order to recreate it exactly.”
Glen Wilson/ Amazon Content Services LLC
Next, came the more complex part — getting into the character’s psyche.
“The second step was to learn about Lucille and Desi and their story, not just their characters, but who they were as people and as a couple and as a marriage and as professionals and business people and artists, and all of those things that makes for this very, very complex duo,” Lyall explains.
“I read her autobiography [Love, Lucy] which is now covered with Post-its, because every time there was a mention of something that was related to her clothing or her hair, or her preference in interior design or anything like that, I would flag,” Lyall says. “I mean, she wrote about how much she hated photos of birds. And I thought that was such an interesting detail. She didn’t want paintings, photographs, any artwork, any wallpaper, anything that had birds on it. A lot of hats from that era would have feathers or bird themes and I would just avoid that. It informed my design without making a statement.”
The final prep in her studies was watching the documentary the couple’s daughter and producer of the film, Lucie Arnaz made, which was full of home movies.
“That was very useful to me. I watched that a lot,” says Lyall. “There’s a lot of home movie footage, and there are stills and family photographs and so on. They were candid and they weren’t these beautifully staged glamor shots from the ’40s and ’50s. They were much more, smiling with your family and hugging and making funny faces, things like that, that reflect a real person. So that was kind of the interesting part for me, was finding that person.”
For all of her research, it was more important for Lyall to “convey a feeling” than recreate an outfit from a photograph or an event exactly. And to do that, she thought about Ball’s huge success in her career and how she forged her own path in life.
“I would imagine her as this woman in her prime, ahead of her time. She was married later in life, to a man who was younger than her. She had her first child in her late 30s. This is groundbreaking stuff in 1951, ‘52. And I would imagine knowing she was good friends [Katharine] Hepburn or [Lauren] Bacall and other successful movie actresses of her era who are also kind of ahead of their time. To me, that meant wearing trousers,” she shared.
“In the flashbacks, she was always either at home in sort of loungewear, or you would see her as a working actress in the ’40s in a little dress because she’d just come from an audition or a power suit because she was meeting with all the men at CBS,” says Lyall. “She kind of conformed to some sort of perceived sense of beauty for women at that moment, in order to accomplish what she was after. And then she didn’t have to conform anymore. I mean she became a powerhouse. And so then you don’t have to dress to walk into a room full of men and make your case it’s different.”
Kidman and Bardem inBeing the Ricardos.Glen Wilson/ Amazon Content Services LLC
In the end, when asked if developing the character’s style was a daunting task for a character so beloved, Lyall had a quick reply: “No.”
“I thought about it a lot, but it’s so hard for me to figure out what she was like, I can’t believe anyone else can do more than I am right now,” she shares. “So, I feel like people who think they know Lucille Ball in fact are talking about a character she played named Lucy Ricardo and that’s really different. And that is important.”
Last month, Sorkin, 60,commented on the reactions to the biopicin an interview withThe Hollywood Reporter,and defended his decision to cast Kidman as Ball and Bardem as Arnaz.
“We made this movie during COVID, and so in Zooming with Nicole and Javier and everyone else, I’d make it very clear to them that I am not looking for a physical or vocal impersonation of these people,” he said. “Leading up to the first rehearsal, I’d write to them every day, ‘Just play the characters who are in the script.’ I know that Nicole was working on Lucy’s voice for a while, and I wanted to relieve her of that.”
Sorkin also explained how the movie shows a broader portrayal of Ball and Arnaz’s life together, with “less than three minutes” of screen time showing Kidman as Ball performing on the sitcomI Love Lucy.
Being the Ricardosis in theaters now and on Amazon Prime Video Dec. 21.
source: people.com
