Sunny season 1: How was the show’s robot created?

If you have watched the first two episodes of Sunny on Apple TV+ already, then you know there is a lot to love here! The story has the perfect mixture of humor, drama, and mystery, and the title robot is far more nuanced and fascinating than you would imagine.

Also, it is 100% worth noting that this is not just some CGI creation that was never present on set. A part of the show’s charm is that in as many ways as they could, they created a certain amount of practicality around the robot!

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In an interview with IndieWire, showrunner Katie Robbins dove deeper into how Sunny worked, and how the decision was made to work with the legendary folks at Weta to make the robot a main character:

“We knew from the jump that we didn’t want Rashida [Jones] or our other actors to be acting opposite a tennis ball or some kind of CG thing … You wanted a corporeal being there to make it feel authentic … Getting to the place where we had a physical Sunny was so much like trial and error, and then it was that much more complicated to bring that character to life on a daily basis.”

In the interview Robbins also notes that Joanna Sotomura voiced Sunny live on set, wearing a helmet that would allow her to transmit emotions to the robot:

“Joanna could see the face of her scene partner, and this motion capture–type technology [inside the helmet] would translate into Sunny’s expressions … 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.”

All of this is pretty awesome, and it shows further the amount of delicate care that was put into making this series so unique and hopefully successful. We do think that Sunny is destined to be a word-of-mouth show, one where people will hopefully discuss it over time and come to love what it is doing.

Related – Read more now about the next episode of Sunny

What have you thought about Sunny so far?

Go ahead and let us know below! Once you do just that, remember to come back — there are a ton of other updates on the way.