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Australia proves anything but a paradise for the American siblings and spray tan entrepreneurs at the centre of Stan’s new ultra-black comedy Sunny Nights, who face off against exploding crocodiles on golf courses, extortion schemes and Sydney’s scariest loan-shark.
Thankfully, it was another story for the show’s Emmy Award-nominated lead actors D’Arcy Carden (The Good Place, Nobody Wants This) and Will Forte (Saturday Night Live, The Last Man on Earth), who moved with their families from Los Angeles to Sydney last winter for filming.
“I wish we weren’t doing this on Zoom,” says Forte in November, speaking from upstate New York, where he’s filming season two of Netflix hit The Four Seasons. “Man, I miss it. I miss being there, I miss everybody. As an actor, what an exciting part to play, but it was just the best experience. The crew were so wonderful. Everyone was so good at what they did. It was a dream job.”
Adds Carden, who is in Los Angeles: “Nothing has ever blown [either of] us away the way Australia has, where we were plotting ways to stay. And we still talk about it.”
D’Arcy Carden and Will Forte filming Sunny Nights in Bondi last year. Credit:
Under the wing of Sunny Nights showrunner Trent O’Donnell, the actors spent every second not on set soaking in Sydney’s sights and culture.
“Trent directed us at work, but he really directed our whole trips,” Forte says. “He brought us to all these sporting events, we saw the Swans and the Roosters, and he took us on a huge hike in the Blue Mountains. When we weren’t with him, he was telling us where to go, what to do.”
Carden: “There’s this particular kind of Australian pride that I absolutely love that is a very different thing from American pride. With the crew, when we’d say, ‘Oh, we went to the Blue Mountains’, they’d be really happy. Like, ‘Oh, you’re really seeing our home.’”
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No one is quite as kind to Vicki and Martin Marvin, Carden and Forte’s characters in Sunny Nights – a blood-soaked eight-episode ride through Sydney’s bizarre underbelly, where criminals work out of an abandoned amusement park.
Perhaps that’s because the Marvins reek of desperation, with their move Down Under an attempt to reinvent themselves in the 40s via Tansform, a tan-in-a-can product targeting cancer-conscious Australians.
It’s the latest of Vicki’s many get-rich schemes, and she has no problem sweet-talking or outright scamming people to get ahead. “You’re a wonderful, good person,” Forte says to Carden. “But on this show, you’re a super believable asshole.”
“I love Vicki,” Carden says. “She’s so impulsive and she’s so scrappy. Sometimes she acts before she thinks. I do that sometimes, but she’s like a bull in a china shop. She creates a lot of chaos.”
Meanwhile, Martin is usually more measured, a literal risk analyst who joins Vicki in a last-ditch attempt to win back his estranged wife Joyce (Ra Chapman) by following her to Australia.
“Martin, in a way, has his act together more than she does,” Forte says. “But it kind of keeps flip-flopping. You’re like, ‘Oh, who’s the normal one here?’”
It’s Martin who gets the two in serious trouble, after he becomes a mark for extortionist Susi (Jessica De Gouw) and her hot-headed, abusive boss Kash (Miritana Hughes).
Former NRL player Willie Mason almost stole the show from its two US stars in Sunny Nights.Credit:
When things turn violent, Susi teams up with the siblings to kill Kash, enlisting muscle-for-hire Terry (NRL great Willie Mason, in his first acting role) to feed his body to a roaming croc.
Unfortunately, it also chowed down on a Tansform can, blowing up their secret. Police and Joyce, an investigative journalist, are on the hunt, but the real worry is Kash’s psychopathic, vengeful sister Mona, played with great menace by Kiwi comedy great Rachel House (Hunt for the Wilderpeople; Heartbreak High).
Mind you: This is all in the pilot, with Sunny Nights leaning into the chaos. It’s almost two different shows merged together, as the odd title (the name of the siblings’ cheap motel) suggests.
“It’s this delightful combination that somehow gels together, where it’s really funny, but there’s a lot of suspense and thriller elements,” Forte says.
On the one hand, there’s the Sunny sitcom side, home to antics including Tansform’s over-the-top marketing exercises involving aerial advertising and a very-old pilot, or a silly sub-plot involving a reptile removalist turned amateur detective, played by serial scene stealer Megan Wilding.
US stars Will Forte and D’Arcy Carden agreed almost immediately to doing Sunny Nights.Credit:
Then there’s a darker side, as the show slips into an occasionally quite violent thriller when Mona hunts down Kash’s killer. Both actors were drawn in by the script’s ability to balance those two opposing modes alongside a surprising amount of heart.
“I had to make a decision on whether to do eight episodes based on the first two scripts,” Forte says. “And it was very easy to go, ‘Oh, they know what they’re doing.’”
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Adds Carden: “And even with the crime, murder and corruption, it’s a very sweet brother-sister relationship. It’s about having each other’s backs. We’re putting a positive spin on it. Yeah, there’s a ruthless side. But they’ve always been each other’s No. 1, and it’s a lovely thing to see adult siblings have each other’s back, even in this way.”
Created by British-American writing duo Nick Keetch and Ty Freer (High Fire, Almost Paradise), Sunny Nights was further developed by O’Donnell. The Australian executive producer and director has steadily worked across comedy hits in the US and home for decades, most notably smash-hit Colin from Accounts and the seven-season US sitcom New Girl. He was a major draw for Carden and Forte, who had both worked with him before, with O’Donnell directing several episodes of The Good Place and enlisting both of them in 2021 to lend their voices to animated comedy No Activity.
But so was the chance for the actors to work together. Despite having more than 200 roles across TV and film between them over the past two decades and multiple shared voice credits, they had never properly met.
With Forte already on board, Carden was eager to sign on, having been a fan since he was on Saturday Night Live in the 2000s, a decade before she broke into acting with roles on Inside Amy Schumer and Broad City.
“It was like, Trent, check, Australia, check, Will check,” Carden says. “And then I thought, ‘Oh, god, I hope the script is good!’ It was such a relief that it exceeded my expectations.”
As actors who have made a career of committing to the bit, they have an excellent, chaotic chemistry on screen – and keep that up even on Zoom, when they poke fun at the stop-start awkwardness, speaking at the same time on purpose with gibberish. “She feels like a real sister now,” Forte says.
The two weren’t as familiar with the Australian cast before arriving, but only sing their praises as people and professionals – especially for Mason, who they call “a complete natural”.
“It was so interesting to see this person who was obviously one of the most gifted people in his field, then going for it in this completely different territory,” Forte says. “He would talk about how he’s a little nervous, but he picked it up so quickly.”
Mason’s role is surprisingly meaty, too. He plays a former NRL star who turns to crime after developing cognitive and health issues due to on-field concussions, probably CTE – chronic traumatic encephalopathy, undiagnosable until death. It’s a passion point for Mason, who has advocated for stronger protections for players, and evidently, he took this role seriously.
D’Arcy Carden and Will Forte as siblings Vicki and Martin Marvin in Sunny Nights. Credit: Stan
“He’s used to being on a team, and that’s what being in an ensemble is, so it was fun to play with him,” Carden says. “I remember our first scene with him – he just had something, a little spark. He locked into it … I would have been impressed if he could just hold his own on camera. But he has a whole arc and goes through a lot, and I was just blown away.”
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Stan is backing Sunny Nights with one of its biggest streaming slots – the bingeable Boxing Day release, held by Bump for five years before wrapping up. Forte and Carden hope Sunny Nights can become a new holiday tradition, saying the show’s ending begs for a second season. And yes, another few months in Sydney wouldn’t hurt.
“This has been a magical experience,” Forte says. “I can only hope that we get to do it again.”
Carden, meanwhile, adopts more of a brattish, Vicki-like approach: “We just gotta get back there. Get us back!”
Sunny Nights streams on Stan from December 26. Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.
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