In Rooster, Katie (Charly Clive) isn’t doing all that well after her husband Archie (Phil Dunster) has a very public affair with grad student Sunny (Lauren Tsai), which results in her getting pregnant. While Archie wants to do the right thing, he’s not entirely sure what that is, and while he figures that out, Sunny pursues her own academic future with Ludlow College President Walter Mann (John C. McGinley) as her mentor.
Awards Buzz spoke with Tsai about how Sunny is a three-dimensional character and not just the “other woman,” and how she embraces that people aren’t quite sure how to feel about her:
“I think it’s interesting because people watching the show, but then also people she interacts with, probably have a continually varying opinion on whether or not they like her or whether or not they think she’s on her side or their side or just her own side or is misunderstood. It was an amazing opportunity to be able to bring a lot of my own insight and authorship into the character Sunny. Of course everything is the amazing people who make the show and the writers and everyone crafting this character, but I feel that, in my understanding of her, or at least in how I’m trying to play her, I’ve been able to really lean into this character who is a little bit stunted in terms of how she’s emotionally understanding how she impacts other people and what other people are going through but also genuinely wants to, I believe, at her core, Sunny wants to be very accepted and she wants to be a good person and she wants to find her place in the world, but she struggles with these rules she has about how she should act or what someone else should do.”
She shared that she can indeed relate to certain traits that Sunny has:
“It’s hard to try to play a character that struggles with understanding people emotionally if I myself struggle with that, so then how am I supposed to read into where she should understand or not? And I wonder sometimes too if as I’m reading as the person playing her, I’m like, am I missing, am I doing this correctly? Because maybe I’m not understanding how terrible this is, what she’s doing or how this is going to impact Katie. So I’ve spent a lot of effort to try to really dissect and go through things and make sure that I believe she’s missing things and picking up on things and letting people know about that or opening up or being really contained and really tense at the right times, but I’m also someone who can really hyper fixate on one goal or one interest. With me, it’s art and animation, but with her, it’s all of her aspirations as we know for her internship and her future. But, yeah, I think that that’s something that aligns.”
Watch the video above to hear what she’d like to see for Sunny in season two – if she’s even coming back – and what’s next for her in the animation, fine arts, and video game space.
Season one of Rooster is streaming on HBO Max.
