‘Sunnyside’s Kal Penn and Matt Murray Explain Why They’re Not Taking Sides in Their Political Comedy

If Kal Penn’s horrible politician character in Sunnyside reminds you of every sleazy politician around, that’s kind of the point. At the Television Critics Association’s 2019 summer tour, series creators Kal Penn and Matt Murray spoke to Decider about what went into creating Garrett Modi, a corrupt local politician who learns to redeem himself by helping a group of immigrants in search of the American dream.

Penn’s scandal-plagued Garrett is a wreck of a human and a politician. A huge source of inspiration for the character was Anthony Weiner, the former Democratic congressman best known for his sexting scandals. But Weiner wasn’t the only real-life person who inspired Sunnyside‘s resident blowhard.

“It’s not a one-to-one,” Murray explained. “There was also a hockey player who was pulled over by a police officer, and he increased his bribe to the police officer to literally a billion dollars.”

“For better or for worse, there’s no shortage of fast-talking politicians on either side of the aisle,” Penn added. “I remember going into YouTube and just typing in key words. It had nothing to do with party affiliation because I was doing a character study.”

Penn used clips of politicians from TMZ’s D.C. branch in his research. “[It] has all these crazy clips of all these members of Congress at the airport or leaving dinners. They cannot help themselves from talking to a camera. And it’s such a skill I wanted to make sure really drove Garrett,” Penn said.

Sunnyside put just as much thought into how it deals with immigration. According to Murray, the show’s writers’ room is almost entirely composed of people who have either gone through the process of emigrating to America or who have parents who have immigrated to America. The real problems they faced serve as the foundation for the show, allowing its writers to built jokes on top of a place of truth.

“There’s the type of comedy that puts people at the butt of jokes and then there’s the type of comedy that’s sort of uplifting everybody, including the audience,” Penn explained. “We wanted to make the type of show that when you turned it off you felt good about the world or that you’ve hung out with your friends. Not, ‘Well, the world sucks.’ Once you have that approach to the world you’re creating, you have a lot more fun with it and it’s really authentic.”

Murray’s experience working on group comedies like Parks and Recreation, Community, and The Good Place also heavily inspired how the duo created characters. Murray noted that almost every character is Sunnyside is based on a real life person. For example, Joel Kim Booster’s Jim Hao and Poppy Liu’s Mei Lin, a set of absurdly wealthy and absurdly out of touch twins, were based on someone Murray knows.

“He’s literally in some weird international shadiness that very much inspired the twins’ characters, but from a European country,” Murray said. “He hosted this big party in his home country for a lot of us. While we were there somebody said ‘You wouldn’t be having this much fun if you knew where this money was coming from.’ And I was like, ‘Oh. OK.’ So coming up with fun versions of characters like that was really fun.”

Once these characters were set, the Sunnyside creators gave their cast room to develop and explore them. One of the bigger transitions from page to screen was the look of Booster’s pretentious Jim Hao.

“I think the way we envisioned him was the way a lot of cool people come in. Black leather jackets, sort of dark jeans,” Penn said. “Then Joel comes in in capri pants and a halter cutoff shirt and crushes it. And it’s like ‘This is not at all how I envisioned it, and this is absolutely correct. And we have to hire this person.’ They know the characters better than we do.”

But beneath all of its silliness and all of its politician commentary Sunnyside is telling a story familiar to all of America. “Immigration has been part of what America is before America was even America, right? So we’re not recreating the wheel by any means.” Penn said. “It’s all of our story, depending on how far back you go.”

Sunnyside premieres on NBC Thursday, September 26 at 9:30/8:30c. 

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