Lucille Ball’s Daughter Lucie Made a Deal to Be Fired From Her Mother’s Show to ‘Save Face’
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As many Lucille Ball fans know, after the success of I Love Lucy and her many other projects, another cult-favorite show came about called Here’s Lucy! The show followed a woman named Lucy Carter trying to work and balance being a newly single mother to two teens. What made this show extra special is that Ball cast her and Desi Arnaz’s own two children to play her kids on the show!
Along with her son Desi Arnaz Jr to play her on-screen son, she cast her daughter Lucie Arnaz to play her on-screen daughter Kim. Now here’s the thing: Lucie was preemptively planning to be fired from the show, but not for the reason you may think!
When Lucie agreed to be a part of the show, she made a deal with her mother: a deal that consisted of her being written off the show if she started being compared to her legendary mother or got made fun of.
“I debated about whether or not I should actually do that,” she said to Page Six. “Because people will say ‘Oh, she just got that job because she’s her daughter,’ and they would be right.”
She added, “I said, ‘please if that happens … you got to write me out of this show. You got to help me save face, and I’ll go to school and then I’ll start doing something. And she agreed. And we kept that bargain.”
The show ran from 1968 to 1974, and Lucie remained on all six years!
Ball and Desi welcomed two children: a daughter named Lucie, born July 1951, and a son named Desi Jr, born Jan 1953.