Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s daughter opens up about her dad’s alleged affairs

Desi, you got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s only daughter, Lucie Arnaz, recently opened up about the alleged affairs her father had while still married to the “I Love Lucy” starlet.

But Lucie wouldn’t consider her famous dad’s suspected infidelities “affairs” because he allegedly only cheated on Ball with “hookers” whose names “he didnt even know.”

“People say he had affairs,” Lucie, 73, told CBS Sunday Morning in a new interview. “He never had an affair.”

“He didn’t even know these dames’ names, you know?” she added. “They were hookers.”

Even though Lucie admitted that her father likely cheated on her Hollywood icon mom, she also insisted that Desi “loved” Ball and that Ball “understood” that.

“He loved my mother. He loved his family. It was a very unique, weird problem to have, and I think that’s the reason she stayed with him so long, is that she understood it,” she continued. “I don’t think I could do what she did.”

“But somehow at the time, with what they had, with what they needed from each other, they stuck it out as long as they could,” Lucie added.

The “I Love Lucy” stars married in November 1940 and, 11 years later, introduced audiences across the country to the show that some say “invented” the modern sitcom.

Desi, who was a successful musician and bandleader before playing Ricky Ricardo in “I Love Lucy,” and Ball, who was an aspiring actress before she exploded in popularity as Lucy Ricardo on the show, welcomed Lucie just six weeks after they filmed the first episode.

Although Ball reportedly wanted to name her daughter Susan, Desi allegedly went behind his wife’s back and changed it to Lucie on the birth certificate.

The couple later welcomed a son, Desi Arnaz Jr., in 1953.

But Ball ultimately filed for divorce from Desi in March 1960 after 20 tumultuous years of marriage.

“It got so bad that I thought it would be better for us not to be together,” the actress and comedian reportedly told the court during her and Desi’s divorce proceedings.

“They were just going through a routine for the children,” biographer Bart Andrews later told People in 1991. “She told me that for the last five years of their marriage, it was ‘just booze and broads.’”

The rise and fall of the couple’s relationship was depicted in the 2021 biopic “Being the Ricardos” – which Lucie recently called “so wrong” and “such a crock of poop.”

Meanwhile, Lucie can still remember exactly where she and her little brother were when they learned that their parents were splitting up.

“We were at their house in Palm Springs,” she told CBS Sunday Morning. “And they said that, ‘We love each other, but the being-husband-and-wife part is broken. And we can’t live together anymore.’”

“And I remember that my brother said, ‘But if it’s broken, can’t you just fix it? Can’t you put stuff on it and fix it?’” Lucie added. “And they said, ‘I don’t think so.’”

Lucie also admitted that her parents were “happier” after their split.

“The truth of it is, they were happier after they got divorced,” she admitted. “The screaming and the arguing and all that stuff stopped.”

Both stars remarried following their 1960 divorce.

Desi tied the knot with family friend Edith Mack Hirschin in 1963, and they remained married until her passing in 1985. He later died from lung cancer in December 1986 at the age of 69.

As for Ball, she married comedian Gary Morton in 1962. They remained married until Ball tragically passed away following a ruptured aortic aneurysm in April 1989. She was 77.