First look: Amy Poehler directs ‘Lucy and Desi’ documentary

Comedian Amy Poehler is raising the curtain on the love story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

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Poehler directed the documentary “Lucy and Desi,” which shows how the couple influenced the entertainment industry and how their reach continues to play a role on the small and big screen to this day.

This is the third take on the Ball/Arnaz story following “Being the Ricardos” and the TCM podcast “The Plot Thickens: Lucy,” Entertainment Weekly reported.

“They established their own studio. That’s an enormous operation,” Norman Lear said in the trailer that was released this week, according to Variety.

Their studio, Desilu Productions, not only created “I Love Lucy,” but also “Mission: Impossible” and “Star Trek.”

Poehler backed the project because she wanted to tell Lucy and Desi’s whole story — the good and the bad.

“Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, over the years, have been kind of flattened out and made two-dimensional,” Poehler said before the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Variety reported. “I was really interested in seeing the people behind the images.”

“People use words like ‘genius’ and ‘icon’ and ‘trailblazer,’ but those aren’t human words. Those were words for machines and astronauts, which — they were both astronauts, for sure, and they were ahead of their time. But they were also people,” Poehler told Variety.

To show the private side of their lives, the production worked with their daughter, Lucie Arnaz, who said their success came with a high price.

“Work became our whole life,” Ball is heard saying in archival footage.

Lucy and Desi divorced after Arnaz’s adultery, Variety reported.

The documentary will air on Amazon Prime Video starting March 4, Entertainment Weekly reported.

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