As I Love Lucys William Frawley, the Oscar winner gives the film some grade-A sass.
Simmonsdo his thing: unvarnished, witty, completely dependable.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We all watchedI Love Lucyin syndication.
J.K. Simmons in ‘Being the Ricardos’.Glen Wilson/Amazon Studios
Did you watch it during its first run?
It’s like I knew I was an old bald character actor waiting to happen.
William Frawley is a fascinating actor.
We know him as Fred Mertz immortally but he had something of a backstory, right?
Aaron [Sorkin]brilliantly peppers in all these little details in the script.
Bill spent 40 years in vaudeville and on Broadway and doing little character parts in movies beforeI Love Lucy.
So one of the aspects of his personality is that he was a bit of a curmudgeon.
He didn’t suffer fools.
Notoriously, he didn’t mesh with costar Vivian Vance.
The whole conflict with Vivian began at the first table read of the first episode.
You’ve worked on some movies with beautiful scripts:Juno,Whiplash,Palm Springs, now this.
Do you have a set of principles that helps you choose these roles for yourself?
That really is 90 percent of it, the script.
I skip the log line, I skip all the details, and just read the script.
I’m glad you asked that question.
He never dismissed any of those ideas out of hand.
It was always a conversation.
But his ego is not afraid of actually listening to somebody else’s idea.
You’ve obviously been through many an awards season.
At this point in your career, what do awards mean to you?
But more importantly, we’re telling these stories and we want eyes on this movie.
