The surprises never stop in “Sunny,” the darkly comic, Kyoto-set AppleTV+ series where Rashida Jones shines as Suzie, a suddenly bereaved widow and mother.
Sunny? That’s the name of Suzie’s new companion – a robot given to her by her techno-innovator husband Masa Sakamoto (Hidetoshi Nishijima) just before he and their only child disappeared in a plane crash.
“Sunny” the series, Jones, 48, explained in a Zoom interview from Kyoto, “is a dark fairy tale thriller that takes place in a near-future Japan about a woman who suffers a huge loss and is given a robot to help her grieve.
“Being given that robot, she discovers a lot about her missing husband she didn’t know. It takes her on this adventure where she’s chasing something — but she’s also being chased. And she has to befriend this robot she finds annoying and suspicious.”
Along with the series’ dark humor there’s also just darkness.
“Masa,” Nishijima said via a translator, “is one of the mysteries of the show. As you can imagine, if you have someone you love as a partner and trust — and then he ends up being a totally different person than you thought? Your world starts crumbling at that moment.
“You wonder,” he continued, “who is Masa who you thought you knew so well? What kind of ideas or thoughts did Masa have? He’s a very scary person in that sense.
“There are several mysteries in the show but he’s one of the biggest.”
Jones, who grew up in the celebrity bubble of legendary parents Peggy Lipton and Quincy Jones, is known for long-running stints in “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation.” “Sunny” is something new.
“I’ve never had the opportunity to be the propelling force of a mystery and I love the idea of the emotionality of moving forward within a mystery and the clues she discovers along the way to see how that changes the way she feels about her past. And her future, frankly.
“This felt a little bit like a Trojan horse for something deeper. To me, the best things have a visceral, emotional, intimate impact on you — while also telling this big story that you’re hopefully wrapped up in.”
Everyone tries to be sympathetic to Suzie about her loss — and fails.
That’s because Suzie is, Jones said, “A well-formed coping and defense mechanism confronted with the worst circumstances you could possibly imagine in your life.
“Eventually, if she’s ever going to heal, she’s going to have to let somebody in. So this is like an adult coming of age story, where she’s forced to do the last thing she could possibly imagine: How to get an earnest soft spot for a robot.”
AppleTV+ streams 2 of 10 episodes of “Sunny” on July 10
