In terms of television shows, I Love Lucy was an extremely unconventional show. For one thing, the series was by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as a duo. Based on a radio series titled My Favorite Husband, Arnaz and Ball had the world at their fingertips when they were first developing the series.

“At the beginning of I Love Lucy, they gave us a choice of five, six, or seven scripts and asked us what we wanted our characters to be like,” said Ball during an interview with the News and Record. “No one had ever done that before.”

Though Ball and Arnaz were married in real life, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo were not a carbon copy pulled out of reality. Ball maintained that when creating the characters, she wanted Lucy and Ricky to have honest, normal lives.

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“I...didn’t want us to be a typical Hollywood couple, whatever that is,” said Ball. “I wanted our characters to have problems. Economic problems. All kinds of problems. I wanted to be an average housewife. A very nosy, but average housewife. And I wanted my husband to love me.”

Though Lucy had more than a few hare-brained schemes, the Ricardos’ working-class lifestyle helped audiences relate to them. Despite the success, Ball explained that making the series at all required an enormous leap of faith.

“I am not funny,” said Ball. “My writers are funny. My direction was funny. The situations were funny. But I am not funny. What I am is brave. I have never been scared. And there was a lot to be scared about. We were innovators.”