Sunny is,
unquestionably, my favorite Baudelaire, as I’ve discussed before. This is a condition going back at least to The Slippery Slope. While I always loved her idiosyncratic way of
communicating, that book was when she really started coming into her own as a
character, and my love increased with every new adventure. The TV series, which recently dropped its
third and final season on Netflix, has only cemented this fact for me.
It’s the
show I’m primarily looking at today, particularly Presley Smith in the role of
Sunny. Back when the first season aired
and we got news that it was renewed for a second, I just sort of assumed that
Smith would be recast in season 2.
Adorable as she was, her inevitable growth was going to be even more
obvious than that of the young actors playing her siblings, and there was no
way she was going to be believable as a baby the following year.
But the
show kept Smith, nicely lampshading it at the start of season 2 with Klaus
complaining that they’ve been waiting around so long (in a scene directly
following the season 1 finale) that Sunny was starting to look less like a baby
and more like a toddler. And goodness
gracious, I’m so glad they did. I’m not sure what it says about me that, in a
show that’s pretty much bursting with things to love about it, my absolute
favorite part is someone who’s probably still not entirely aware that she’s in
it.
Starting
in season 2, Smith was old enough that Sunny could do a bit more than look
cute, be carried by Violet, and show off her biting prowess through CGI magic
(although that shot of her clinging to a door knob by her teeth in “The Wide
Window” is always going to be awesome.) She
could be involved in the story in
minor but endlessly-watchable ways. She
could use a typewriter in “The Austere Academy,” sneak around the penthouse in “The
Ersatz Elevator,” and “drive” a fire truck in “The Hostile Hospital.”
From
there, things just get more amazing. By
the time we get to season 3, the actual words she uses start to catch up with
her subtitles, reflecting the evolution of her language in the books. I don’t even think her dialogue is dubbed
anymore by an adult using a baby voice – from what I can glean from IMDb, that’s
Smith doing the lines herself (even if it appears that they’re still largely
dubbed in afterwards.) And of course,
she’s more than ready to meet the demands of the Baudelaires’ various
misadventures and Sunny’s again-minor but palpable growth as a character. In “The Slippery Slope,” when she lets Violet
know she can handle herself on her own, I
die from cuteness and sweetness, holy crap. She gets all the best (subtitled) lines, the
cutest outfits, and the girls has reaction shots for days.
The thing
is, I don’t even know how the show does it.
I mean, Smith is so young that it’s hard to even call her an actor at
this point in her life. But Sunny isn’t
just an adorable prop or plot point on the show. She is, without a doubt, a character in her
own right, and Smith’s “performance” has a big part in bringing her to life. So how do they pull it off? Do they get Smith to mimic someone
offscreen? Do they just watch her make
faces until they get the reaction shot they want? Are there endless hours of wasted footage of
them waiting for this toddler to do what they want her to do? Is it all CGI and/or camera trickery? I have no idea, and even though I’m morbidly
curious about it, I sort of don’t even want to know. Smith as Sunny is just fascinating to watch,
and I’m content with letting her simply be a magical element that helped the
show be as exquisite as it is.
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