Here are some photos of Alia Shawkat on the blue carpet premiere for Being the Ricardos. Whenever we’ve talked about Alia in recent years, it’s usually been in the context of her friendship with Brad Pitt. Brad was trying to hang out with some of the cool kids in Hollywood, and I think Alia wrote some of his awards-season speeches back in early 2020. She and her friends also went with Pitt to a Black Lives Matter protest in LA, where Brad was apparently just riding around on his motorcycle? It’s been weird.
Because Alia’s profile got a boost from being in Pitt’s circle, people also went looking into her past. Which is how, in June 2020, a clip from 2016 resurfaced online. In the 2016 clip, Alia casually uses the n-word like it’s nothing, like she uses it all the time. Alia offered an apology for it but it reminded me a lot of what people said about Lena Dunham’s hipster/rich-a–hole clique, that they’re all racists who think they have some kind of pass to use words like that. And I was reminded of ALL of that when I read this short interview from Alia on the carpet for Being the Ricardos:
Alia Shawkat wasn’t surprised to learn that Desi Arnaz was unfaithful to wife Lucille Ball.
“She married a Cuban,” the actress, 32, told Page Six at the premiere of the “Being the Ricardos” on Thursday night at Jazz at Lincoln Center. “I assume there were dalliances.”
Shawkat then clarified she wasn’t saying that all Cuban men are incapable of fidelity, explaining, “At that time, I think most husbands cheated on their wives.”
The Aaron Sorkin-penned movie stars Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as Lucy and Desi and follows a week on the set of their classic sitcom “I Love Lucy” in the 1950s when the comedienne was accused of being a communist and dealing with her tempestuous marriage to Arnaz. The “Arrested Development” star says she had no idea Ball had been accused of being a communist.
“But what’s interesting is — you know how on Amazon when you watch a show, they have trivia in the corner?” she says. “When I was watching the show every night while shooting, one episode was like, in this episode, Lucy was accused of being a communist and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s the movie I’m making right now!”
The freckled-faced star also confessed that she hasn’t always been fond of her trademark facial feature, but is happy with them now. “As a kid, I didn’t like it all; I used to cover them up with makeup,” Shawkat said, before adding, “now it’s all I’ve got. ‘You’re the one with the freckles!’ That’s me!”
God, this is bad! “I assumed Desi was unfaithful because he was Cuban! Amirite, Cuban men?” Racist stereotyping of Cuban men and Latin American men as unfaithful louts, that’s about what this CURSED film deserves. Alia plays writer Madelyn Pugh in the film, a film about the one Cuban man in history who didn’t cheat on his wife! Lord. As for attempted save… saying that she meant that she assumed all men cheated on their wives in the 1950s is kind of bad too? But it’s not racist, so I guess she “saved” it.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
Maeby would never. What a disappointment.
Ugh! Girl needs to censor herself! Not ok!
She is consistently embarrassing and racist.
Yikes 😬!
What a moron.
Who is this awful person? I’m glad I’ve never heard of her.
If she had meant it in the context of the era, she wouldn’t have specified “Cuban,” so yeah, she is racist.
Yep. He may have been messy, but that shouldn’t have been made about his race at all.
Cuban is a nationality not a race, Hispanic is an ethnicity and Latin in the US is someone from Latin American or, in Europe, someone who speaks a language derived from Latin.
She is the WORST. She thinks because she has Middle Eastern heritage on one side of her family she’s part of the POC club and can therefore disparage other cultures and races because she’s like, super funny and like, gets it. Spoiler alert, Alia: you don’t get it, and it’s not funny. It’s just racist.
Yuck, what a d-bag. And that suit is ugly.
Wow, I had no idea about the n-word business! So she just sucks all the way around, then? Okay.
Look, you don’t get to make jokes that disparage a community unless you are meaningfully part of that community.
Full.stop
Her attempted save is terrible too considering her grandfather was a famous actor in the 50s, Paul Burke who starred in his own TV show Naked City.
She’s essentially telling us her grandpa cheated too?
Right? There were no faithful men back then? Thankfully no
she sounds like a straight up idiot in this interview
Total Lena Dunham insufferable millennial hipster vibes. She isn’t even half as intelligent as she thinks she is.
Yikes. She did drop the n-word at least once and tried to say that it was okay because she didn’t use the hard r. That she felt comfortable saying THIS out loud doesn’t come as a surprise.
I immediately thought of Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls lost their Accent. In the same-ish time period as I Love Lucy a character in the Dominican Republic makes the same comment about Dominican men. Meaning, I can see how a woman from a similar time period and culture might say something like that cynically, but Shawkat doesn’t fit that category, and she clearly has a history of hipster stupidity.
I love “Search Party” but she’s literally the weakest link on the show and she’s the lead.
Still waiting for season 5, LOL’d so hard this past season.
Terrible hair on bare bones actress. She really coasted on having freckles and curly hair for the longest. This was racist but obviously she doesn’t mind being racist
What is she wearing, ffs.
I thought Desi did cheat on his wife…of course, saying all cuban men cheat is foolish and problematic. I also wonder if she was thinking in terms of Hollywood. She’s had a narrow life, growing up and working in one industry around the same types of people. She’s also probably used to people who “get” her so she doesn’t have to roll out well-considered statements. Hopefully she’ll learn better.
My father is Cuban and my mother is American (Irish/English) and SHE’S the one who did the cheating, not my Cuban father. Just goes to show……..my mother also bears a striking and unfortunate resemblance to one Hee-La-Ria Baldwin, as my mother comes from a well-to-do Boston family of extremely dull WASPS. As soon as she married my father and took on that Cuban last name, she changed her first name from Mary Lee to Marilea. One time I had to write her a check and realized I had no idea what her legal name was.