Joy Sunday is worth watching for the vulnerability she finds in self-possessed characters. We rate her as an ensemble actor: in Wednesday, she gives the star someone worth answering, and the familiar school rival some life.
Fi1m perspective
In Wednesday (2022), Joy Sunday gives Bianca Barclay a steady, challenging gaze, but lets uncertainty show through the confidence. Bianca could have been a routine school rival, and Sunday makes her worth attending to without asking us to forget her sharpness. She gives Jenna Ortega someone who can hold up the other end of an exchange. We enjoyed their school scenes because Sunday and Emma Myers bring warmth and comic life to a programme whose mystery is often predictable.
Her earlier parts offered less room for that kind of complication. She played Sophia in Cooper Raiff’s Shithouse (2020), Celia in The Beta Test (2021) and a doctor in Dog (2022), during a stretch dominated by supporting work. Those credits are not enough to justify grand claims about what she can do; Bianca is the more useful evidence. Wednesday made her breakthrough out of a character who might easily have been written off as the mean girl.
Steven Conrad’s DTF St. Louis (2026), in which she plays Jodie Plumb, puts her in another ensemble worth spending time with. Her ease in paired scenes suits a series whose awkward friendships are more compelling than its investigation. David Harbour supplies much of the warmth, and the comedy has enough bite to carry stretches when the pace slackens. It is a stronger programme than Wednesday, though neither makes a persuasive case for watching chiefly to find out what happens next.
Sunday’s most useful quality so far is her willingness to let a forceful character look vulnerable without making a separate event of it. The steady look gets our attention; the uncertainty gives her scene partner something to answer. We have more evidence of what she brings to an ensemble than of what she might sustain at the centre of a film. Start with Wednesday for her, with the understanding that the school company is better than the supernatural plotting.
Biography
Joy Sunday is a Nigerian-American actress. She was born in Staten Island, New York, to Nigerian parents and trained in theatre at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in New York City. She later studied at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, graduating with a degree in critical studies.
Sunday made her television debut in an episode of MacGyver (2018). She has appeared in Dear White People, Good Trouble and other series, and in films including Bad Hair (2020), Shithouse (2020) and Dog (2022). Her breakthrough came as Bianca Barclay in the Netflix series Wednesday (2022). In 2026 she starred as Jodie Plumb in the HBO limited series DTF St. Louis, receiving a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.
