Name: Joy Sunday
Hometown: New York, NY
Current role: Bianca Barclay on Wednesday
Teen Vogue: If you could be the main character in any TV show or movie that’s not your own, who would you be and why?
Joy Sunday: Well, the first one that comes to mind is Killing Eve. I just really love Jodie Comer’s lead, Villanelle. I don't know if it's because I want to be the character or I want to be her playing the character. So there's a little bit of a gray area there. Maybe an anime. It would be a terrible world to exist in but Attack on Titan is pretty epic. I just love the martial arts part of it. So yeah, probably that and there's so much trauma. So why not?
The talented Joy Sunday is ready to send people into a trance, and she doesn’t need to be a siren to do so. In Tim Burton’s Netflix series Wednesday, Joy portrays Bianca Barclay, the most popular student at the prestigious gothic school Nevermore Academy who butts heads with Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega).
“She’s a siren which means she can persuade people with her words,” Joy tells Teen Vogue over Zoom from her home in NYC. “I think she's naturally charming and aspirational, but she also does have this power that makes people magnetized by her. She wields that, but she also wants to connect with people organically and wants people to see her as soft as she is. She spends a lot of time trying to show people her genuine self, but I wanted it to recede. She kind of gets harder, so she straddles both sides.”
Similar to Bianca, Joy is a jack of many trades, including autodidacticism, dancing, and linguistics. As a teen, Joy Attended LaGuardia High School (home to alums Timothée Chalamet and Jharrel Jerome) where she studied theater. Outside of academia, she doubled as a filmmaker, participating in several Tribeca Film Institute film programs including Tribeca Film Fellows where she directed and produced several shorts.
After graduating from LaGuardia, Joy studied at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts and graduated with honors in critical studies. She then made her way into the entertainment sphere as an actress, starring in shows like MacGyver and festival award-winning movies such as Cooper Raiff’s debut Shithouse. Lately, she has thrived in the macabre, appearing in dark projects including Bad Hair and The Beta Test before landing Wednesday.
“I love horror. I fancy myself a zombie connoisseur. I do like darker media,” Joy says. “I don't exactly know why. Even the music I listen to, I like sad music. I think I heavily relate with appreciating the darker side of things because it allows you to embrace the beauty of life and all of its different phases. To kind of appreciate that even when things are down, I'm still in the rhythm, and still in the melody of life.”
With Wednesday, Joy advanced her skills even further, delving into the realm of intense sports. Her character Bianca engages in both fencing and canoeing during season 1. “The entire cast had to learn how to canoe. We had to wake up at various times from 5:30-6 am to drive an hour out to a lake somewhere in Bucharest to learn how to canoe with like 20 stunt guys, and a couple of gals,” she says. “We'd have to race against each other, and it was pretty grueling. You don't realize that racing canoes for an hour is quite the job.” For the fencing component, she trained for a month before they shot those scenes: “I was like 'Oh, this is sports!' There was a lot of athleticism across the board.”
As Bianca, Joy projects a self-assured, intense energy — compounded by her luminous blue eyes, which intimidated even Joy herself. “Looking in the mirror versus seeing myself on screen is a little crazy,” she says. ”It would be funny, meeting somebody for the first time on set, and they'd be like, ‘Why are you looking at me so strange?’ Because of the contacts. Then seeing it on screen? I'm like, ‘Oh my gosh… my eyes are sharper. There were a couple of times I forgot that I had the contacts in. There was one time I was halfway home before I noticed that I still had them in my eyes and had to turn around and return them to the set.”
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The actress looks back on her experience on set in Romania with, for lack of a better word, joy. In their off time, the cast would do several bonding activities such as playing cards, go-karting, going on exploring trips, and having potlucks. Joy would always bring banana bread.
“I think because we were in such an unfamiliar setting for a lot of people, and away from our families for a long time, we just really leaned on each other for support,” she says. When dealing with a mix of newcomers and veterans, she was grateful for the collaborative vibes of everyone on set. “I have to say for a set full of household names and veterans versus newcomers and people who had this as their first job, everyone meshed really well. Everybody was so receptive and warm, and willing to teach and willing to advise.”
That includes director Tim Burton, who Joy was able to observe on set. Wednesday was his first time directing a TV series — and one of the first times he’s centered a racially and ethnically diverse cast. Joy joins a very short list of Black characters in Burton works, but she brings with her a refreshing form of representation with confidence and awareness.
“I feel really fortunate to be able to put the flag down and have his trust to execute that vision that he had,” Joy says. “Something I observed with Tim was that he hires people that can bring his vision to life. And so to know that I had that same respect was really helpful and not being so nervous. Truthfully, it was the first time I've ever been on set and not been nervous while performing, which is wild. It’s Tim Burton in another country with hundreds of people on set, more than I've ever had, but I felt so comfortable. I think that's why it shows through Bianca.”
