Movies - TV
The Life-Changing Sacrifices Lucille Ball Made For The Sake Of
Star Trek
By WITNEY SEIBOLD
Lucille Ball insisted on producing Gene Roddenberry’s “Star Trek” through her accomplished production company Desilu, even though the show was expensive and lacked great ratings.
Marc Cushman, a writer-producer who pitched the story for “The Next Generation” episode “Sarek,” explained that Ball didn’t have the funds to financially support “Star Trek.”
He said, “Lucy’s instincts were right about ‘Star Trek,’ that it would become one of the biggest shows in syndication ever. [...] [But] her pockets weren’t deep enough.”
“They were losing $15,000 an episode, which would be like $500,000 per episode today,” Cushman added. Ball was advised not to invest in “Star Trek,” but she did it anyway.
Cushman shared, “You can read the memos where her board of directors is saying, ‘Don’t do this show, it’s going to kill us.’ But she believed in it. She moved forward with it.”
When the financial burden of “Star Trek” became too much for Ball to handle, she had to sell Desilu to Paramount Pictures during Season 2 of the show.
Cushman concluded, “Lucille Ball gave up the studio that she and her husband [Desi Arnaz] built, it’s all she had left of her marriage, and she sacrificed that for ‘Star Trek.’”