Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash”) was born during the fourth season of “I Love Lucy.” And now 66 years later, he’s portraying actor William Frawley who was Fred Mertz on the classic in Aaron Sorkin’s “Being the Ricardos.” It stars Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball, Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz and Nina Arianda as Vivian Vance. “Weirdly as a young kid, watching it on mom and dad’s old black-and-white TV or maybe when grandma and grandpa had it on TV, I sort of identified with Fred Mertz,” observed Simmons during a recent Deadline Zoom interview with Bardem. “I just thought he was a delightful and amusing guy. And here we are 60 years later, I got to inhabit that guy for a while.”
When the series started in 1951, Frawley had appeared in vaudeville and dozens of movies. “It really wasn’t a giant stretch for Bill to play Fred Mertz, nor was it a giant stretch for a crabby old character actor like me to at 66 to play William Frawley at age 65,” said Simmons, who is nominated for a Critics Choice Award. Just as Frawley he started out on stage before he segued to moves. And, he added with a laugh, they are both bald.
Though the Oscar-winning Bardem (“No Country for Old Men”) channels the charming Cuban-born band leader/singer/actor/musician, he admitted he wasn’t familiar with the series. The show, he said, wasn’t as popular in his country as in the U.S. “I really started to dig into it once I knew there was some interest in me playing Desi. I was very interested in play Desi the moment I started to realize how great he was as a person. He’s charming, exciting, fun energy, also very stubborn, but very light as well.”
Once he watched the series and listened to audio recordings he was given by the couple’s daughter Lucie Arnaz, Bardem felt Arnaz was “relentlessly” passionate about everything he did. “Like everybody else, he has his dark sides and shades and light, but he didn’t let that interfere with what he wanted to achieve, which is to make something big-out of him, out of his music, out of his show, out of his wife. I think that passion is the thing that was feeding the energy and the capability of him doing so many things.”
Though Bardem sings with great aplomb such Arnaz hits as “Cuban Pete” in the film, he had never sung before. Sorkin, he added “I guess thought that I might [know how to sing]. That’s why he called me. I guess in the back of his mind, he more or less imagined I could pull it off. That being said, when we talked and he asked me all these questions about singing, dancing, playing punk ass guitar., I lied to him.”
And Sorkin, Bardem quipped, knew he was lying about his abilities. “I’m very, very thankful to him because he allowed my lies to take place in the conversation. He put this beautiful face on-‘Oh really Wow, you can sing? Oh, really?’ I guess we actors usually lie to get roles. And this wasn’t my first time.” But as soon as he got the role, Bardem started to panic. “I love music, but it’s not in my nature to sing,” said Bardem. “I think it’s very vulnerable to expose yourself singing. It’s something that I’ve never experienced before, knowing that when you open your mouth and make noise in front of people. I never felt like that while I was acting.”
There’s a pivotal scene in the film in which Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Frawley have an exchange at a local bar during a break where the actor asks her “How many know that Desi runs the show?” Sorkin, said Simmons, “gives each of our characters moments when the character’s not on screen. You get such insight into each of our characters from the other characters. So, in that scene I’m kind of taking on the role of uncle to Lucille-there was a lot of affection between these two and Bill and Desi became very good friends as well. I love that he’s kind of explaining to her an aspect of who her husband is. It’s like, I know you’re with this guy all the time. I know you love him. I know you are married to him. But you’re kind of emasculating him at work and that’s not good for anybody.”
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