Lucille was hung out for
backing communism. It
reminds you of Twitter
A Very British Scandal
Claire Foy returns to our screens as
the Duchess of Argyll in a three-part
drama that follows the divorce case
that shook the country in the Sixties.
From Boxing Day, BBC1Mortimer & Whitehouse:
Gone Christmas Fishing
The fishing duo head to the north
of England to angle English salmon.
Football legend Paul Gascoigne will
be on hand to help them to land a
catch. Be warned: it might all end in
tears. Boxing Day, BBC2Royal Carols: Together at
Christmas
The royal family’s special carol
service will be shown on ITV rather
than the Beeb, supposedly after a
row over the BBC2 documentary
The Princes and the Press. The
Duchess of Cambridge hosts the
service. Christmas Eve, ITVCarols from St Paul’s Cathedral
Kit Harington and Rose Leslie
got intimate on Game of
Thrones, are married in real
life and now will each give
readings from St Paul’s
Cathedral. Dec 23,
Classic FMJon Snow’s final
Channel 4 News
After 32 years
at its helm, the
74-year-old
newsreader,
right, is stepping
down. Dec 23,
Channel 4Jake HelmCHRISTMAS TREATS
At work and at home Nicole Kidman.
Below: with Javier BardemPAL HANSEN. INSET: GLEN WILSON/AMAZON
different. That’s life in a democracy.
Also, it’s different if you spread misin-
formation about vaccines, for instance.
Or incite violence. But we’re going to
have to start to be OK with having our
feelings hurt once in a while.”
There has been consternation about
the casting of Bardem — a Spaniard — in
the role of Desi, a Cuban. Sorkin
remains angry that his choice has been
questioned.
“It’s heartbreaking, and a little chill-
ing to see members of the artistic com-
munity resegregating ourselves,” he
says. “This should be the last place
there are walls. Spanish and Cuban are
not actable. If I was directing you in a
scene and said: ‘It’s cold, you can’t feel
your face.’ That’s actable. But if I said:
‘Be Cuban.’ That is not actable. Nouns
aren’t actable. Gay and straight aren’t
actable. You can act being attracted to
someone, but can’t act gay or straight.
So this notion that only gay actors
should play gay actors? That only a
Cuban actor should play Desi? Hon-
estly, I think it’s the mother of all
empty gestures and a bad idea.”
Back to Kidman, and I ask how the
business has changed since Ball’s time.
“Well, that scene where it’s all men in
the boardroom? It wouldn’t look like
that now,” she says. “There would be a
couple of women at that table. Not all,
not half — but there would be some, so
decisions are far more equal. There
was more of a sense of privacy back
then, because they didn’t have social
media. That frontier is new, and it’s not
my language.”
Kidman has two teenage children
with her musician husband Keith
Urban. “I look at younger people and
know [social media] really is a language,
but we do need to protect our brains.
Know what it’s doing to our wiring.”
It has been a hectic month for Kid-
man, flying around the world to push
Being the Ricardos. Ball juggled her job
and being at home in I Love Lucy by
working with her husband. I ask Kid-
man how she manages. Can people
with her fame maintain a private life?
“Well, you have your life where
you’re a mother, wife, daughter and
sister, and that’s not exposed unless
you do a documentary,” she says. “But
interviews are strange, because it
depends on what mood you get a per-
son in. We are all many different facets.
I try to be protective of my home and
heart, but at the same time it’s on dis-
play and at times feels very vulnerable.”
Yet she still wants to do interviews
unlike, she says, many of her friends.
She understands, as Ball did, that the
point of her job is connection. Fans give
stars a lot more than stars give fans,
although it can be hard. “You navigate
it,” Kidman says. “Look back and
go, ‘Ah why did I do that?’ I’m not
willing to sell my soul, but I try to
stay open.” She pauses. “This is a
weird existence I have,” she con-
tinues, and she laughs again. cindividual, rather than a tabloid pack-
age. In quick succession, after she and
Cruise divorced in 2001, she appeared
in the raucous Baz Luhrmann musical
Moulin Rouge! and Lars von Trier’s
twisted Dogville, before Birth, in which
she has a bath with a 10-year-old.
Unlike Ball, Kidman will not be remem-
bered for just one thing. “I’m very for-
tunate that I haven’t been viewed in
one particular way,” she says. “If that
was the case, I’d bark, ‘Don’t put me in
a box!’ But I’m also quite wilful.”
It is great to see Kidman cutting
loose as Ball, after a run of roles in
which she always seemed to be a well-
to-do woman who belongs to the nicer
parts of the Upper East Side: The Undo-
ing television series with Hugh Grant;
the adaptation of the Donna Tartt
novel The Goldfinch; Big Little Lies. We
first fell for Kidman on screen because
of her vibrancy and, thankfully, that
returns in Being the Ricardos.
“You see her in those roles and it’s
easy to think she’s made out of porce-
lain,” Sorkin says. “That she’s a doll. It
was great to see her in this, rolling
around in a vat of grapes, coming up
with withering insults. She had fun.”
When Sorkin called Kidman, he said
that he wanted her to capture Ball’s
swagger. “I went, ‘Yes! I love a woman
who has a bit of swagger.’ ” Kidman
says. “I’m very honoured Aaron thinks
I have swagger.” She laughs.
She is grateful to Sorkin for writing
Ball as the smartest person in the
room. I Love Lucy was pioneering and
Ball is shown as its driving force.
“There are only a few people who can
write the smartest person in the room,”
she says. “And to do so, they have to be
the smartest themselves. Aaron is.”
Sorkin sits across from me, the
smartest person in the Zoom. From
The West Wing to last year’s The Trial of
the Chicago 7, the writer of the fastest
dialogue in town is back to tackle
politics and personalities at a time
of great American upheaval.
He is fascinated by the cultural
impact of I Love Lucy and the issues it
raises, such as whether actors in main-
stream hits are allowed to voice opin-
ions. In the 1950s few dared to admit to
communism, but given the myriad can-
cellations nowadays, I suggest to Sor-
kin that we have returned to an era
when actors are scared to speak out.
He agrees, and understands their
fear: “In the movie, Lucille checked a
box [backing communism] at a time
when it wasn’t a big deal. Sixteen years
later, the world changed and she’s hung
for it. That reminds you of Twitter.”
I mention Gina Carano, the
actress sacked from Star Wars after
expressing doubt about Covid and also
being accused of being transphobic.
“I could rebut some things she said,
but I don’t think she should lose her
job because of it,” he says. “On the
other hand, if they’re losing advertisers
because she’s on the show, that’s19 December 2021 5