Rashida Jones had an unsettling encounter with a Furby back in the 1990s. The popular birdlike talking toy that belonged to her sister suddenly started saying lines outside of what it was programmed to repeat. Scared, they threw the colorful furball out.
The idea of having a seemingly sentient robot around still troubles Jones. “I don’t have Siri or Alexa,” she said. “I am sure they’re listening anyway, but I’m not yet ready to invite a full computer that has access to all these means of gathering information into my house.
” Ironically, that’s exactly what her character, Suzie Sakamoto, does reluctantly in the near-future dark comedy “ Sunny ,” a series produced by A24 that debuts Wednesday on Apple TV+ . Suzie, an American living in Japan, learns that her engineer husband, Masa, ( Hidetoshi Nishijima ) and their young child are likely among the casualties in a plane crash. Grieving alone in the historic city of Kyoto, she is visited by one of Masa’s coworkers, who delivers Sunny, a robot with a cheeky personality that Masa designed specifically to anticipate her emotional needs, and begrudgingly accepts it.
The more time Suzie spends with Sunny, the more revelations about its origin surface. “Sunny” was adapted from Colin O’Sullivan’s 2018 novel “The Dark Manual,” and showrunner Katie Robbins was intrigued by how the protagonist, for whom human connection has caused so much sorrow, could find a safety blanket of sorts in an android companion.
