Wednesday, January 9, 2019

A Few Thoughts on Sunny Baudelaire (A Series of Unfortunate Events)


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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