'I was very blown away by the way in which Lucy and Desi adapted their relationship to each other throughout their lives, and remained friends and partners until the end of their lives,' Poehler tells The Hollywood Reporter.
features never-before-seen footage and photos, as well as first-person narratives from Ball and Arnaz themselves. Additionally, Poehler interviews many who knew the duo and those who were impacted by them: their daughter Lucie Arnaz, Desi Arnaz Jr., Carol Burnett, Bette Midler and Norman Lear. And there’s still a treasure trove of material about Ball and Arnaz,and their relationships with costars and mentors that Poehler discovered.
It’s such a hardy art form. I have such respect for it and reverence for it. It is one of, I think, the most interesting ways to tell a story. So I did and I am influenced certainly by other documentarians and moved by them. But I think that what I really tried to do was remember what I enjoyed the most out of the stuff that I watch about real people in their lives, which is anytime I can feel connected emotionally to the story.
I didn’t know that Lucy was the last person Desi spoke to, and that they had a phone call. I started tearing up because it makes you think about time wasted, and how short and fleeting life is. Lucy and Desi both were outsiders. He was a Cuban immigrant and people didn’t let Cuban men run a lot of things and they certainly didn’t let Latin men play sophisticated men of power on TV. We have a beautiful Cuban playwright Eduardo Machado in the film who speaks to what it was like coming to America as a young child and seeing the character of Ricky on TV— a man who was not a fool, who nobody made fun of his accent, who was in charge, beautifully dressed, and had a wife who adored him.