On The Scene: Special ‘Sunnyside’ Screening for the Queens Community

On Tuesday, September 24^th. Kal Penn and NBC hosted a special screening for the Queens community at the Museum of Moving Images.

‘Sunnyside’ on NBC is playing now!

At the Museum of Moving Images, Kal Penn and NBC hosted a special screening for the Queens community in celebration of the “Sunnyside” pilot premiere.  Over a hundred local Queens residents signed up to attend the screening for free.  Kal Penn specifically held this event in honors of the Queens community as the new comedy show takes place in Sunnyside, Queens.

“Sunnyside” follows Garrett Modi, the child of immigrant parents who coasted his way through life and became the councilman for his district.  However, his laziness and borderline corrupt practices left him disgraced and kicked out of the office.  Now, with no job and no money, Garett crashes at his sister’s apartment.  He concocts a plan to use his infamous name to meet people who want to laugh at him in exchange for money.  This plan, while humiliating, works until his last meeting for the day.  A group of non-citizens who are looking for help to navigate the citizenship process, call him in hopes that he has some connections that will help them get their citizenship.  This group of people consists of people from all walks of life, looking to finally become legal citizens in the country that they love.  Garett at first sees this as an opportunity to get some easy cash, but when one person from the group gets arrested and deported by ICE, Garett sees the importance in helping these people and seeks redemption from his disgraceful time as councilman through these people.  The pilot was hilarious, from the drunken video of Garett Modi trying to bribe a cop with a billion dollars, to Griselda’s several spontaneous part-time jobs, everything follows a light-hearted style of comedy.  The characters are also very unique and diverse, not only in an ethnicity sense but from a social and personality sense as well.  You can see a lot of Queens within this ensemble.  I personally am excited to continue watching the show on my own and see how this story progresses!

While the screening was taking place, Kal Penn was on his way to the museum from Citi Field, where he threw out the first pitch for the game.  He arrived just after the screening to hold a Q&A session.  Check out it out below!

Moderator: So can you tell us how the story began?

Kal Penn: Yeah, so about five years ago I was on a show called “We Are Men” with Tony Shalhoub, Jerry O’Connell, and Chris Smith and it was on after “How I Met Your Mother”, we shot nine episodes and they aired three of them and then called and said “please don’t come to work tomorrow.”  So that was a bummer, but my manager and producing partner asked “Hey, what’s your dream project? What would you want to create if you could?”  I said it would be a comedy and it would be a patriotic comedy, as cheesy as it sounds.  I have a love for humor, I have a love for America, and I wanted things that were reminiscent of what I grew up watching like “Fresh Prince”.  I don’t know anybody who lives in Bel Air or anyone who lives in a Mansion, but I felt like I knew all of those people, I felt like I knew all of the characters.  If you go back even further, “Head of the Class” or, I don’t know if this holds up anymore, but “Perfect Strangers”, only because you felt good at the end of the episode and you feel like you’ve hung out with friends of yours.  I feel like recently, I’m a big fan of John Stewart’s “Daily Show”, but it doesn’t make you feel good when you turn off the TV and the end of the night.  You actually feel really bad about the state of affairs; I like the former, I like things that make you feel good.  So we thought, well, what would that look like?  Maybe teaching?  Maybe a class? Maybe a Cop show?  We weren’t sure how it would kind of fit.  So, we thought, what about civics or citizenship and started developing it.  Then I got a job on “Designated Survivor” and had to put this on hold.  Then, when “Designated Survivor” went to Netflix and we knew it was only going to be a ten-episode season, we had the chance to revisit this and develop it with Matt Murray who’s my co-creator of “Sunnyside” under the Mike Schur banner.  Those guys have the same views that I did of comedy, where it can be uplifting and inclusive, and I just loved that.

Moderator: So you have a bit of background in public service and you’re playing somebody in public service.  On “Designated Survivor”, you also played someone in public service.  That trajectory is quite interesting and I wonder what may have influenced this particular character.

Kal Penn sitting down for a Q&A session after the screening.

Kal Penn: Yeah, so with “Designated Survivor”, I actually passed on the project originally, before reading the script.  They said, “Hey, Kiefer Sutherland is playing the President and they’re looking for someone to play the Communications Director”.  “No,” because I feel like people are going to think that I only took that part because I worked at the real White House and maybe it’s not going to be challenging.  Then I read the script and I was like” oh, it’s a conspiracy theory show with Kiefer Sutherland, who’s awesome, you should consider this.”  I was a junior staffer in the Outreach Office at the White House and I loved my time there, but I would liken it to if I was an actual airline mechanic for two years and then played a pilot in an off-Broadway show.  Like that’s the difference between being at the real White House and being on “Designated Survivor”.  So there was almost no similarity, I consulted on the show also because I knew enough about the world, but the actual day-to-day, no.  And then for this, it was kind of random that he happened to be a disgraced politician when Matt Murray and I were talking about how the world develops.  My first pitch to him actually, it should be a learning annex thing, the people who hand out the pamphlets back in the day, and maybe he’s teaching a wine tasting class and he falls in love with the woman across the hall who’s teaching a ‘how to fix your tire’ class.  And so Matt remembered a story about a hockey player in the early 90s who actually got pulled over for a DWI and tried to bribe the cop, and went up to 1 billion dollars.  He was acquitted ultimately of bribery because he did not have 1 billion dollars.  So if he had stopped at a million bucks, he probably would have gotten charged with something, but because he went up to a billion dollars he didn’t have, he was acquitted.  So I was like, okay, Matt Murray, you are way funnier than I will ever be, this is obviously the right direction.  And the idea of a disgraced councilman seemed to offer the lowest point possible to seek redemption from.  So it was less about wanting to explore politics and more about wanting to explore a really interesting world of characters.

Moderator: In terms of the writing staff, did you seek out those who are immigrants or the children of immigrants?

Kal Penn: Yeah, and I know that when I see articles about this written, they’re always framed as though its some really difficult task to hire people of color, LGBT folks, or women, or whatever.  Our number 1 rule for our amazing casting director Alison Jones was, “Hey, bring us the funniest people”, and she did.  And then for the writing staff, Matt Murray handled the whole process and he said: “We want to make sure that folks are either immigrants or the kids of immigrants or have some sort of firsthand knowledge of that experience, but first and foremost they have to be funny.”  And it was not hard to find them.  We have the most talented group of writers, and I know I’m gonna sound like an actor who’s saying what every actor says, but they are more talented than I could possibly imagine.  One of the ways we dealt with that in the casting process was that the Griselda character was El Salvadorian and Diana Maria Riva is Dominican so what we said to Allison was that there is some specificity to the roles we’ve written, but if you think that there are really funny actors who are not the specificity that we’ve written, please bring them in.  If they’re the right person for the job, we’ll tweak the part.  Poppy Liu is here today and Ana (Villafañe) is here too, and they are amazing examples of our hope that we could cast the funniest people in the room.

Moderator: Would you or have you considered using the Sunnyside White Castle in the show?

Kal Penn: I am a fan of the Impossible Slider; I will disclose this.  Osmany Rodriguez, our other executive producer, also directed the first two episodes.  We shot for about a day and a half in Sunnyside and when we were getting exterior shots he was like “hey, just cross the street over here.”  And I’m thinking, you know that I know that you’re trying to get a shot of me in front of the white castle.  Does he really think I don’t know?  So, I’m like “Oz, you trying to get it in front of the subway? I mean the elevated tracks and the stained-glass windows are amazing.”  And he was like “Nah I was just hope… Can you just walk in front of the White Castle for me? Please, just do it.”  We didn’t end up using it, I think we want to keep the worlds separate, but I love the love!

Moderator:  I don’t think anyone has come to this stage directly from Citi Field, how did you do?

Kal Penn: Yeah, so I threw out the first pitch tonight.  It should be noted that I was always picked last in gym class, but the twelve-year-old in me was super excited that I got to throw out the first pitch.  So I hired pitching coach, which I hope sounds less like bougie Hollywood and more like the nerd that I am from New Jersey.  It was a little high and outside but I made it into the glove!  I did not pull a 50cent, or Carly Rae Jepsen, or Mariah Carey.  So it was alright!  I was happy with myself.

“Sunnyside” is officially playing now on NBC, check out the trailer below!