‘Let’s Talk to Lucy’: New podcast unearths personal side of TV icon Lucille Ball

Press Play with Madeleine Brand

Lucille Ball made her name on TV, but she also had a radio show called “Let’s Talk to Lucy.” A trove of old reel-to-reel tapes has been pulled from her archives. They include interviews with the biggest stars of the day, plus her close friends and co-stars. Most of these conversations haven’t been heard since they originally aired in the mid-1960s. Now hundreds of them are airing on SiriusXM and will eventually be available wherever you get your podcasts.

Ball used many of those interviews to gauge how well she performed as a real-life mom. That’s according to her daughter Lucie Arnaz. “She was always searching for answers herself. So she would talk to Jeanne Martin … or Debbie Reynolds, other women who had children, and she asked them, ‘How do you do it?’” Arnaz says.

She adds, “She didn't have much of a happy-go-lucky, bonded childhood with her own mother. So when she decided to have kids, she was kind of flying blind, as most of us are.”

Press Play also gets reviews of the latest films: “Cinderella,” “Karen,” and “Unapologetic.”