Page 75 - S Summer 2024

From the first moments of the new Apple TV+ series Sunny, it’s at
least partially clear that Rashida Jones is living in a Kyoto of the
future. Or maybe it’s a parallel universe. Her character, Suzie Sakamoto,
has just discovered that her husband and son have vanished in a
mysterious plane crash, and she’s been gifted a domesticated robot made
by her husband’s robotics company to somehow help her deal with it all.
At first, she tries to end Sunny (said robot, voiced by Joanna Sotomura)—
it’s too close, too strange, too non-human to be able to understand
her grief. Inevitably, though, they develop a friendship. Together they
uncover the truth of what happened to Suzie’s family and become
tangled in the secret underbelly of Kyoto that Suzie never knew existed.
Sound eerily familiar? Save for some of the wild details, technology’s
encroaching presence in our lives is a theme that is, for better or worse,
extremely relatable. And the fact that it’s front and centre in Sunny is
partly by Jones’s design (she executive produced the series alongside
director Lucy Tcherniak and writer/creator Katie Robbins, who adapted
the story from Colin O’Sullivan’s book, The Dark Manual). “I think it’s
pretty lonely to be alive, especially right now with all the false promise
that we’re connected, because of technology, makes us feel lonelier,” she
says. “I love the idea of finding ways and being part of a parable about
how to talk about those things without directly talking about them. It’s
not exactly what people are going through right now, because we don’t
have domestic robots, but we are contending with this overwhelming
relationship with technology that permeates our lives whether we want it
to or not.”
The artificial intelligence revolution loomed large over Hollywood in
2023, with a lengthy SAG-AFTRA strike that upended the industry and
won protections around the use of digital replicas of actors like Jones.
Sunny, which had been filmed before the strike, explores the concept
further. “I’ve been obsessed with AI and the question of what makes
us sentient since I was a kid,” she says. “What is it to be alive and what
is it to be human and how do we define that in a way that protects our
humanity? Will AI ever be able to imitate that? And do they become
sentient through that imitation?”
Big questions for a morning commute—Jones is calling while driving
across Los Angeles to her appointment. “It’s really glamorous, I’m going
to get my bone density checked,” she says, laughing. It’s only natural that
the 48-year-old actress, producer, writer, and director would be multi-
tasking—it’s been a busy year/decade/life. A very quick rundown of
Jones’s multi-faceted life and career includes comedic roles in hit sitcoms
The Office, Parks and Recreation and Angie Tribeca, podcast hosting alongside
Bill Gates, helming a production company, and producing a Grammy-
winning documentary about her father, the legendary music producer
Quincy Jones. Oh, and she had a baby with her partner, Vampire
Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig in 2018. The list goes on. When I ask
how she balances things, she’s refreshingly honest. “There’s a myth that
women can have it all and then everybody has to make it seem really easy
to have it all, because that’s part of the new pressure under the guise of
feminism,” she says. “For me, my priority is my family and my inner life.
And so, I hope that the things I pick for work can be a part of that. But
I have to make sure, for me, that those things are fulfilling and I’m not
being emptied out. I don’t want to be on that treadmill and so emptied
out that I don’t have the energy and time for myself and
my family.”
Another thing Jones is refreshingly honest about is her current
relationship with fashion, which she describes as questioning at best. “I’m
of an age where all my friends seem to be talking about this feeling that
they really used to feel inspired by considering how to dress for the world,
and how to be the kind of person they wanted to be in the world through
fashion, and I think we’re all having a moment where it’s just kind of
like, ‘I don’t know,’” she says. Jones is a big fan of menswear, uniform
dressing, and everything she wore in Japan while filming Sunny, but she’s
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“I think the feeling is really hard to put into words, and I, for one, will say that I don’t think I would have made it
through my grief if I didn’t have comedy and I didn’t have a way to cope and deal with it.”