‘Sunny’ Needed a Very Specific Robot — Here’s How the Apple TV+ Series Pulled It Off
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.
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. And certainly Episode 9, which takes place solely in Sunny’s “mind” as she has an existential crisis and debates whether or not she deserves to be taken offline permanently, wouldn’t be as affecting if we hadn’t already fallen for her.
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“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 Wētā Workshop (of course). Working with Robbins’ needs and specifications in mind, they conjured up multiple prototypes for what a 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.
“That was a really exciting process for the design team,” robotics engineer Craig Hobern — who was part of the build and engineering team— told IndieWire. “Being on the workshop floor and seeing the concept art coming out as we were doing R&D, we had posters and stuff up on the walls. But the energy is the really big thing I remember from the pre-production build process, just everyone being so excited about trying to do so much practically in camera with these animatronic puppets was really exciting, especially in the manufacturer department.”
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.”
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.
“It was a lot of work at the beginning,” robotics supervisor Tyler Page told IndieWire. “We were still figuring things out as we went. We had about three months of pre production with Sunny and training with the puppeteers, getting to the point where it didn’t feel like work anymore. It was just, ‘OK, we’re going to go in, we need to do this. Let’s have fun. ‘And then we could all get together, work as a real team and have fun doing it.”
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.”
“One of the things that Weta was really pushing for was to have something that could be a live character on set that would bring the energy for the rest of the cast,” Hobern added. “Over the course of the shoot, working alongside Joanna, she had ideas about how she wanted to play particular scenes or beats. And we’re able to work with her to manipulate that facial tracking system a little bit more to really enhance the performance. The whole system was really designed to be as tight and streamlined as possible so that what she’s doing and saying and the time it takes for that to be projected for the other actors to see, it’s measured in milliseconds.”
That all came powerfully together in the ninth episode, in which Sunny is confronted by her actions and questioned about her motives. The bravura episode is a triumph of technology, and Hobern modestly points directly to Sotomura. “I cannot emphasize enough just how much of an absolute joy and wonderful human Joanna was to work with,” he said. “She is Sunny, and that beam of sunlight and energy that she can bring through on a daily basis on a day on set is just incredible. And to see her work, especially in episode nine with the emotional rollercoaster that we’re going through, is so intense.”
“I just remember coming back to the tent after shooting a scene [in Episode 9] and Craig’s in the tent with Joanna doing those minute tweaks that he’s talking about, and Craig and Joanna are both in tears,” Page added.
But even Sotomura’s vocal performance could only help so much in the series’ trickiest shot: The scene in which Sunny makes an omelet.
“Luckily, we ended up shooting that much later in the schedule, so we had time to work on that. But that was a combination of performer and suit,” Hobern said. “And also just working out the cuts and cutting around actually making an omelet. We didn’t want to see the puppet crack an egg or do anything like that.”
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.”
“Sunny” is streaming on Apple TV+. The season finale airs September 4.
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