Cory Stillman
Joy Sunday may be a relative newcomer in Hollywood, but her striking smile is sure to make her an icon sooner rather than later. Still, we do not get to see that smile very often in the HBO miniseries DTF St. Louis, where Sunday plays special crimes officer Jodie Plumb, forming an iconic duo alongside Detective Donoghue Homer (Richard Jenkins). As Plumb, Sunday withholds that smile until the series’ final moments, where a peaceful reflection amongst Plumb and Homer gives way to a surprisingly vulnerable admission: she and her husband are ethically non-monogamous.
Sunday credits her legendary collaborator in Jenkins with fostering such a safe and open environment for this shocking moment.
“We really gave each other our trust to let it go,” says Sunday. “I’m so grateful for that scene and it probably would be my favorite one that I shot, even though, going into it, I was very scared for what my parents would think.”
Sunday and Jenkins have incredible chemistry in DTF St. Louis, exchanging all kinds of insights about their characters’ own sex lives and kinks in relation to the layered relationships they uncover amidst their investigation into the murder of Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour). Jenkins’ Homer is very traditional; he cringes when he must write the phrase “ass play” in his notebook, and prefers a woman’s breast covered in a bra, cast in a certain light. Plumb, on the other hand, provides an unexpected entry point into the fluidity of the love(?) triangle between Floyd, his wife Carol (Linda Cardellini), and their friend Clark (Jason Bateman).
It may seem that it brings Plumb no joy (pun intended) to be the resident expert on suburbia and the sexual frustrations that go along with it, but Sunday never set out to be so stoic! That final scene with Homer was actually the very first one Sunday shot for DTF St. Louis, so perhaps that big grin was simply part and parcel of her first-day excitement. Whatever the motivation, that smile ends up serving as a kind of magic trick for Plumb, whose impressive and hilarious grasp over the Smernitch case up until that point is handled with such composure and grace. In many cases, a character like that could disappear into the background, functioning as little more than a plot device. But Sunday’s deadpan delivery, followed finally by her expressive glee, renders Plumb one of the more fascinating figures in this deeply weird and engrossing tale.
And as it turns out, that part was very much by design.
“[Steven Conrad] wanted me to stand out from this background of greys, industrial and militant,” says Sunday. “He wanted me to stand apart from that. It really helped to inform the direction I would take Jodie in. It kind of showed the potential that Jodie had for discovery and newness.”
But integrating into the idiosyncratic tone of DTF St. Louis still required a further surrender on Joy’s part, embracing a kind of frankness and childlike simplicity in discussing sex. In thinking about her early auditions and days on set, Sunday recognizes that the show helped “remove this apologetic kind of tone I had in talking about sex.”
“And I think that frankness really helps to establish where we are, which is that sex is a reality of the show,” she says.
Check out our full conversation with Joy Sunday below, as we dive deeper into the unique brand of sexuality, femininity, and detective work that her role as Jodie Plumb lends to DTF St. Louis.
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