“Oh my gosh, sorry, I really didn’t expect to cry this early on!” Joy Sunday laughs, wiping away an errant tear. It is a humid July Sunday morning in GLAMOUR’s central London offices, and my first question to the 28-year-old actor – a rather innocuous one, asking about who the small group waiting outside our meeting room are – makes her instantly well up.
“I’m so lucky,” she says, eyes filling. “That’s my team. They’re like my family.”
From the outside, Sunday seems the picture of calm sophistication – deep red stiletto nails, a sculptural denim mini dress – warm, radiant, and so strikingly beautiful it takes a moment to recalibrate when she sits down. However, emotions clearly run close to the skin. It's unsurprising that the last couple of years have been something of a whirlwind.
If you’ve already binge-watched season one of Wednesday on Netflix, you’ll know Sunday as Bianca Barclay, the coolly commanding siren, who uses her voice to control the minds of others. The Queen B of Nevermore Academy – a gothic boarding school for outcasts – she is initially the bitter rival of the show’s star, Wednesday, played by Jenna Ortega. Directed by Tim Burton and based on The Addams Family, Wednesday became an overnight sensation after its release in 2022. Within three weeks, it became the second-most-watched English-language Netflix series and went on to receive two Golden Globe nominations and win four Primetime Emmys.
We can't wait to return to Nevermore.
Sunday, who up until then had a string of short appearances in TV and film, was catapulted to fame. Even now, the scale of the show is hard for her to wrap her head around. “I had no sense of how huge it would be,” she says. “There are a bunch of Netflix shows, so you don't know what's going to take off. Going into it, I was just happy I got to work, travel, and be okay for a little bit, and I'm happy with that. But I’m so grateful I had that quiet window before everything shifted – when the world didn’t know me yet.”
The second season, which releases this week, is perhaps set to be even bigger – featuring a star-studded cast including Lady Gaga, Thandiwe Newton, Billie Piper, and Joanna Lumley. The audience also gets to see a different side to Sunday’s character, Bianca.
“I'm really happy that people get to become more intimately acquainted with her history,” she says. “The Bianca that I met when I first got the script versus who she is now – there's such a difference. In season one, she's kind of built a wall and acts as if she doesn't need anything. But now we get to understand… the vulnerability and insecurities that she's facing.”
Much like Bianca, Sunday is used to navigating complex spaces with grace and grit. Born and raised in Staten Island, New York, to Nigerian parents who moved to the US in the 1970s, her path to screen stardom has not been eased by privilege or free passes. Growing up, her mother worked as a nurse’s assistant, her father a social worker. The latter, as is the story of many immigrants, struggled with visa issues.
“My dad came to America with a scholarship to study engineering at Columbia – at one point he was actually deported, [but] he was able to come back,” she says. (The mass deportations happening in the US at the moment, she adds, are “truly harrowing and disappointing.”)
She inherited a love of reading from her father, and her first taste of performance came not from a stage, but from an imaginary classroom. “I would read books to imaginary kids in my room,” she says, grinning. “That's where I learned my first sense of pacing, character, and presence.”
She honed her craft at LaGuardia High School, the legendary New York performing arts school that gave the world Timothée Chalamet, Jennifer Aniston, and Nicki Minaj.
But behind the prestige, it was not all plain sailing. “It was supposed to be this haven – I was so excited to be going there,” she says, choosing her words carefully. She felt that the environment was not supportive of Black and brown students. "I could feel the inequality.” GLAMOUR has reached out to LaGuardia for comment.
She developed debilitating stage fright, and after only two weeks, had made up her mind to quit acting altogether. “I just hated performing,” she admits.
After starring in the second most-watched English speaking show on Netflix, Joy discusses how the show arrived at a tough point in her career.
Instead, she turned to filmmaking, eventually landing at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. “I didn't [plan] to go back into acting, because as far as I was concerned, it was going to be impossible.”
But the desire was still there, lying dormant. It was only after graduating at 20, and having a particularly tough day at work as an assistant to a studio executive, that she realised: “I looked in the mirror, and a tear rolled down. I said out loud, ‘I want to be an actor,’” she says.
She handed in her notice the following week. Within a month and a half, she had found an acting class, then a manager. The next few years weren’t glamorous. She worked as a transcriber. She lasted “five minutes” at Trader Joe’s. She shot videos for a private tutor and took the LA bus everywhere – no car, no shortcuts. At the same time, she was doing the iterative, grinding work of endless auditions. “Every fantasy role you can think of, I probably auditioned for it.”
She made her television debut in an episode of the action-adventure series MacGyver in 2018, had a small role in the 2020 Hulu film Bad Hair, and appeared in one episode of Netflix’s Dear White People. Not enough to stand on her own two feet – but enough, she laughs, for her to owe the Screen Actors Guild $4,000.
By the time the casting call for Wednesday came around, she had moved back in with her parents in New York, burnt out and ready to give up. “It was during the pandemic, and I wasn't getting any work. It was just such an uphill battle,” she says. “Two weeks prior, I had a call with my agent and said, ‘I'm going to end this. I'm done.’”
Her final audition was for Bianca Barclay, done in her childhood bedroom. That’s also where she first met Tim Burton – over Zoom. “My parents didn’t even know who he was, or what Netflix is,” she laughs.
Alt girls, take note.
Burton is the first director Sunday “felt truly comfortable with.” As for co-stars? “Catherine Zeta-Jones was the first actress I ever wanted to be. It was wild going into Season One and being like, ‘Oh, yeah, I get to work with her,’” she says. “Billie Piper is such a sweetheart, and Steve Buscemi is a legend.”
Does she feel famous yet? “I’m not super online, so I guess I don’t experience the full brunt of it,” she says. She has a friend who helps run her Instagram account and tries to stay off social media as much as possible. “People tell me that I have this fan base… but I don't know that I'm having the same experience as everyone else when it comes to the fandom, which is okay! I'm grateful for what I have.”
There was a moment, though, that she’ll never forget – at an event in Paris at the Louvre, brushing past Kelly Rowland. “I didn’t say anything, but someone told her I loved her, and she said, ‘I love her too!’ I was like, ‘Oh my God.’”
The pressure to translate that initial success into longevity weighs heavily. “In some ways, your life changes immediately because you have this notoriety, but in other ways…” she pauses. “I didn’t book another job between Wednesday and this other show I’ve just wrapped. That was tough for me to reconcile, because you're on this huge Netflix show, so you're supposed to be getting stuff handed to you.”
She sighs, “I am just so tired of this industry being underhanded with folks who look like me… You're watching other people get stuff handed to them, and it's not like my work is shit. And again, I know why I'm not getting those same things.”
I wonder what she makes of the recent pivot away from the emphasis on diverse casting within the industry. “The money isn't there anymore [for diversity initiatives],” she says. But clearly, the issues persist; institutions remain sclerotic. “We still have a huge problem with colourism, for example.”
That doesn’t mean she’s slowing down. In fact, she’s dreaming bigger. When I ask her what her bucket list role would be, she smiles. “To play a pop star.” Ideally, she says, Lauryn Hill. “I love to sing – I don’t usually tell people that!”
Not bad for someone who once swore off performing altogether. Joy Sunday may have imagined a life behind the camera, but it's clear she was always meant to be seen.
Wednesday is streaming now on Netflix.
Photographer: Adama Jalloh
Stylist: Jack O'Neill
Hair: Sacha Massimbo
Make-Up: Pauly Blanch
Interview: Emma Loffhagen
The part 2 trailer has just dropped! Here we woe again.
