‘I Love Lucy’: Lucie Arnaz Says Mom Lucille Ball Was Nothing Like Lucy, but Was Dad Desi Arnaz Really Like Ricky?

I Love Lucy was on the air from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957. To this day, it is still a widely recognized and beloved show. No TV character will ever be quite like Lucy Ricardo.

The daughter of I Love Lucy stars Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Lucie Arnaz, reflected on the similarities between the show’s famous characters and her parents back in 2016. She says Lucy was nothing like her mother in real life. But her father was a different story.

Lucille Ball ‘wasn’t anything like’ Lucy Ricardo in ‘I Love Lucy,’ according to her daughter

Lucy Ricardo is mischievous, silly, larger-than-life. But, according to Arnaz, her mother was actually “very serious, really, sometimes to a fault.”

“She played a very funny person in her show, very crazy, outrageous person, and all my friends used to think my mother was really like that,” she told the Television Academy Foundation. ”But, at home, of course, she wasn’t like that at all. She was very responsible, took care of business. She worried a lot about her household, whether the kids were being taken care of, if the garage was being cleaned out, homework was being done. She fashioned herself as a homemaker of sorts.”

To be fair, Arnaz argues that no one is really like Lucy Ricardo. And yet, we all have a little Lucy in us somewhere.

“Lucy Ricardo really isn’t like any living person. Come on, you know, she is that little part of all of us that is the troublemaker and, you know, the sprite, the handful, but I don’t think there’s really anybody who was exactly like that character,” she said.

Desi Arnaz ‘was very much like’ Ricky Ricardo in ‘I Love Lucy’

Lucie’s father, on the other hand, Desi, was a lot like the character he played.

“Ricky was very much like my father,” said Lucie.

Being more of of a straight character, it’s not so hard to believe. That, and Ricky Ricardo’s life looked a lot like Desi Arnaz’s life (save for being married to someone as mischievous as Lucy).

Ricky was a Cuban bandleader and singer who was trying to succeed in show business. Later in the series, the Ricardos even move to Hollywood where Ricky tries to become an actor.

Ricky’s journey shared lots of similarities with Desi’s. Desi was also a Cuban musician who attempted to make it big in Hollywood.

And, according to his daughter, Desi knew his way around show business, just like Ricky. She actually feels she inherited her father’s good business sense.

“I think I’m a pretty good business person, actually, because I think like he does,” she said. “If you don’t know, ask. And there are no stupid questions. Hire the right people and let them do their job. He also used to say, ‘If you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything,’ which sounds ridiculous but it’s actually served me very well in my life. He was very practical in that sense.”