Suzie (Rashida Jones) has no friends in Kyoto. When we meet her in the first moments of Apple TV+’s “Sunny,” her husband and son are missing and presumed dead when their airplane crashes; she has a testy relationship with her mother-in-law, and because of her dyslexia, she still hasn’t learned Japanese. There’s barely a reason to exit her fugue state until the delivery of an at-home assistant: the aptly named Sunny.
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Designed by her husband (who, until the moment of Sunny’s arrival, Suzie always thought worked in refrigerators), Sunny is at first a burden, then a sympathetic ear, and then, miraculously, a friend. But none of “Sunny” would work if we don’t buy the very real relationship that springs up between a human woman and a robot.
“We knew from the jump that we didn’t want Rashida or our other actors to be acting opposite a tennis ball or some kind of CG thing,” showrunner Katie Robbins told IndieWire. “You wanted a corporeal being there to make it feel authentic.”
Enter Weta (of course). Working with Robbins’ needs and specifications in mind, they conjured up multiple prototypes for what an robotic at-home assistant could realistically be, not just on the show but within the world of the show, as well. One absolute rule: Stay away from the uncanny valley of making Sunny too humanoid.
The final design accomplishes several things: It is realistically futuristic while also endearing, with an oversized childlike head and the economical yet expressive features of a stick figure. “Getting to the place where we had a physical Sunny was so much like trial and error,” Robbins said. “And then it was that much more complicated to bring that character to life on a daily basis.”
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Because human connection was vital in conveying the burgeoning relationship between woman and machine, Sunny was the product of multiple people working in tandem. One controlled Sunny’s wheelbase to move her in and out of the scenes. Another wore a rig that would relay arm movement and gestures for Sunny to replicate. A third person handled the “computer-y beep boop like coding stuff,” Robbins added.
But the triumph of Sunny is in the vocal performance of Joanna Sotomura, who recorded her lines live on set while wearing a helmet. This was not to prevent the cast members from putting her face to Sunny, but to film and transmit her facial expressions to Sunny’s monitor. “Joanna could see the face of her scene partner, and this motion capture–type technology [inside the helmet] would translate into Sunny’s expressions,” Robbins said. “So when Joanna would smile, Sunny would smile. When Joanna would blink, Sunny would blink. But because Joanna’s expressions are human and exist on a micro level, Sunny [needed] more. So Joanna had to figure out how to translate her human palette of expression to stuff that would translate onto [Sunny’s] screen.”
And though Sunny plays a helpful robot assistant, she was a true diva offscreen. “We were shooting in Kyoto in July and August when it’s incredibly humid,” Robbins said. “And then by the time we wrapped, it was December, and we were outdoors, and it was freezing in Japan. And robots, like a lot of computers, do not like extreme temperatures. And so Sunny would have to go into a cooling tent. The robot was the most high maintenance of all of the actors.”
The first two episodes of “Sunny” are now streaming on Apple TV+. New episodes premiere every Wednesday.
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