The MVP: Joanna Sotomura Brings Charm and Mechanical Menace to Apple TV+’s Sunny
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Editor’s Note: Welcome to The MVP, a column where we celebrate the best performances TV has to offer. Whether it be through heart-wrenching outbursts, powerful looks, or perfectly-timed comedy, TV’s most memorable moments are made by the medium’s greatest players—top-billed or otherwise. Join us as we dive deep on our favorite TV performances, past and present:
In the opening moments of Sunny, a near-future dark comedy airing on Apple TV+, we witness something that hangs over the rest of the series: in the middle of a frantic scene, a cutesy-looking robot bashes in a man’s skull with a chair. The machine is quickly shut down, but the damage is done, and as the camera lingers on the victim’s dying expression, a voice in the background says, “It will be fine. No one will know.”
Soon after, we’re introduced to Suzie (Rashida Jones), a woman reeling from the apparent loss of her son and husband, who both went missing in a recent plane crash. When she returns home after rounds of questioning, she’s greeted with a conciliatory gift from her spouse’s company, a robot named Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura). Of course, Suzie doesn’t know this, but the bot—a round-headed, precious little guy—bears a striking resemblance to the machine we saw commit a gruesome act of violence in the intro.
While that association lingers in the back of our minds, what’s impressive is that Joanna Sotomura’s performance as Sunny is so deeply charming out of the gate that it’s easy to forget the frightening things this AI-powered assistant may be capable of. From the moment Sunny meets Suzie, Sotomura pours a buoyant energy into the role that transcends the fact that she’s delivering a purely vocal performance in a live-action series, her positivity exuding from the adorable pixelated smile on this bot’s LCD monitor. And Sunny will need all the charisma she can muster because, at least initially, Suzie is not pleased with having this new roommate. She views the bot as a constant reminder of her husband’s many deceptions, chief among them that he was secretly a roboticist who designed machines like Sunny.
An interesting change of pace here between Sunny and many other robot helper-style characters who need to “discover” how to be less mechanical is that she feels quite human from the jump. Although she’s eager to help Suzie out, she speaks in an informal cadence that makes her sound like a genuine companion instead of a robot servant, frequently making little jokes that land thanks to the casual enthusiasm that Sotomura imbues every line with.
For instance, after Suzie tells Sunny she shouldn’t hold her breath for her affection to be reciprocated, the bot cheerfully responds, “I don’t breathe!” It’s a total dad joke, but the line fully connects thanks to the unbridled joy Sotomura conveys. As the series develops, Sunny’s infectious good vibes and Suzie’s dour streak create a funny buddy dynamic as the two slowly strike up a genuine friendship.
But while Sotomura nails Sunny’s glee, she also taps into something more complicated lurking beneath. In Episode 5, Suzie, Sunny, and Suzie’s friend Mixxy get lost in the woods. Sunny clearly dislikes Mixxy, something you wouldn’t necessarily expect of an “obedient” bot, and Sotomura’s voice finds a lower register as she suddenly accuses Suzie’s friend of putting them in a dire situation due to incompetence or malice. Between the performer’s cutting line delivery and the unexpected rudeness (or more specifically, jealousy), it becomes clear that there’s more to the character than pure positivity—it begins to seem she not only reflects humanity’s good side, but also the bad.
Later in that same episode, Sunny finds a dying baby bird, and Sotomura conveys what seems like innocence and care as the robot secretly places the little creature inside a heating compartment. Initially, it looks like a classic Sunny move, and the performance lulls us into a false sense of security by being as chipper as ever. It’s only later that we come to find there’s something more complex going on here; after the bird dies of natural causes overnight, she regretfully says, “This is what I wanted,” explaining that part of why reason she briefly adopted the creature was so she could understand what it was like for Suzie to be a mom who lost their kid. While this moment could have come across as a classic “evil robot” turn, there is a mournfulness in Sotomura’s voice, conveying that she regrets that she now at least partially understands these feelings.
It’s a scene that gets to the core of what makes Sotomura’s portrayal so great; this isn’t a series that dwells on classic sci-fi questions about whether robots can “learn to feel” because this vibrant vocal performance makes it seem like Sunny is already there. Instead, it’s frequently about the frightening things these bots can learn because they’re so human. While I’ll avoid revealing where the story goes in its last few episodes, these concerns eventually come to the forefront in an entirely Sunny-focused episode where Sotomura deftly captures the character’s confusion and fear over the things she’s capable of, her previously bubbly demeanor largely disappearing as she curses and questions her surroundings. The performance captures this range of emotion, as these swirling, confused feelings come across—despite the fact that she’s voicing an elaborate mechanical puppet with pixels for a face.
Although this series increasingly focuses on an engrossing mystery plot regarding hidden pasts, organized crime, and shady tech companies, from beginning to end, Sotomura’s Sunny is what ties the thing together. She balances out Rashida Jones’ similarly great portrayal, forming a wonderful duo as they each adopt traits of the other. Sotomura gets across the complicated shades of this bot; from her initially bright personality to the more complex ambiguities introduced as the story goes on. Every line of this performance captures an important truth: technology doesn’t always behave like we expect it will.
Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Twitter @eli_gonzalez11.
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