Exclusive: Daniel Pemberton Sits Down with Aaron Sorkin to Discuss ‘Ricardos’

Composer Daniel Pemberton continues his partnership with director Aaron Sorkin on Amazon’s Being the Ricardos, a slice-of-life look at a pivotal week in the lives of Lucille Ball (Nicole Kidman) and Desi Arnaz (Javier Bardem). Their last collaboration, The Trial of the Chicago 7, brought Pemberton Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for Best Original Song. Here, in Being the Ricardos provides an ambitious score, recorded with a 70-piece orchestra, that not only echoes the sound of 1950s Hollywood but also provides a dramatic sound to support this critical week in the lives of Ball and Arnaz.

In a recent virtual conversation for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Pemberton and Sorkin discussed their collaboration on Being the Ricardos. There, Pemberton remarked on the unique differences in each Sorkin project and how that difference helps his composition process.

“One of the things that’s so wonderful about working with Aaron is that every project is quite different. It’s different worlds, different characters. He’s not a guy who’s making the same action film over and over again. Every film is a very rich sandbox to play in,” Pemberton shared. “The first thing I wanted to do was come up with what we call ‘Lucy’s Theme,’ and that was just sitting at a piano and working away just to get this theme that worked. So, once we got that, it became quite an integral part of the score. All of the elements of it: the melody, the chords, the structure, are supplanted all throughout the film. I wanted that idea that, at the end, this theme culminates. You hear it right at the beginning over the logos, and you also hear it right at the end. I love that kind of bookmarking.”

Sorkin’s also raved about Pemberton’s scoring prowess. With Ricardos as his third directorial effort, he appears to be amassing a consistent team of collaborators while Sorkin continues to hone his skills behind the camera.

The result? Being the Ricardos is Sorkin’s finest film to date, supported by Pemberton’s fantastic score.

“The bottom line is Daniel makes magnificent music. He has a wealth of understanding about movies too. When you’re doing something hard where the stakes are high, it’s nice to work with nice people,” Sorkin commented. “Daniel is a guy you want to be in a foxhole with and who you want to high five in success and in failure (which we haven’t had too much of yet).”

When composing the score for Ricardos, Pemberton looked to Sorkin’s script for inspiration. The resulting score imbues the film with a bittersweet tone that reflects Ball and Arnaz’s married and professional life.

Sorkin and Pemberton sum it up best:

“I think my first take when reading the script was that it was a dream in some ways. My core sentiment of this script was that a lot of this is about Lucy’s dream for a home and the kind of perfect life that she can’t actually have until creating it on the show,” Pemberton explained. “I wanted to have a theme that sort of had this idea of what Aaron talked about a kind of love theme. What did we call it?”

“A love story that doesn’t have a happy ending, basically,” Sorkin replied.

Take a look at the full conversation between Oscar-nominated composer Daniel Pemberton and Oscar-winner Aaron Sorkin as they reveal the intimate details of the Being the Ricardos score.