Episode description

Aaron Sorkin’s writing style is iconic – dialogue is quippy, fast-paced, and robust – the kind you got in West Wing, Newsroom, and Sports Night. And Sorkin gives us all of that in his latest film – Being the Ricardos – a Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz biopic for which both Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem are nominated for Oscars this season. Host Kelley Carter sits down with the writer/ director Aaron Sorkin to talk about what makes this biopic different from the Lucille Ball biopic you might expect, why he made the Kidman casting choice (it was a controversial one), and how script writing is both thrilling and agonizing all at the same time. Then, Senior Culture Critic for Andscape, Soraya McDonald, and award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic Kimberly Reyes, join Kelley to talk about what they thought of the film, and their feelings on the controversy from the Critics Choices Awards – spoiler: they’re not happy.

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