Why You'll Want To Binge Anna Kendrick's New Comedy Right Now
This content was paid for by Quibi and created by Nicki Swift.
Anna Kendrick's new Quibi series — short for "quick bites" — called Dummy is not your typical buddy-comedy story. In the 10-episode series, which dropped in April 2020, Kendrick plays Cody, who discovers her boyfriend, Dan (Donal Logue), is harboring a pretty big secret. No, he's not cheating on her, per se, but he does own a sex doll.
At first, Cody is nervous to embrace the other woman in Dan's life, but then something weird happens: The doll starts talking to her. "That's great, you're a feminist sex doll," Cody tells the doll, who is named Barbara, and voiced by Search Party actress Meredith Hagner. After getting to know each other, the two ladies start to form a bond and even embark on a road trip together. "A fun loving sex doll and her human friend taking on the world together. That would make an amazing story," Barbara says in the trailer. Indeed, it does.
Surprisingly, showrunner Cody Heller and Kendrick had never been introduced to a sex doll until Dummy started filming. "We were all, like, giggling school kids," Heller told Rolling Stone in April 2020, recalling the cast's first encounter with the inanimate object.
So, why should you tune into this hilarious new show? We'll give you some compelling reasons below.
Anna Kendrick's Dummy is based on a true story
How exactly was Anna Kendrick's new Quibi show, Dummy, created? Well, it was actually based on showrunner Cody Heller's real life — hence why Kendrick plays a woman named Cody in the series. When Heller started dating her now-fiancé, Dan Harmon — creator of hit shows Community and Rick and Morty — they decided to be completely honest with one another inside and outside of the bedroom. "One of the things that came out of that was Dan telling me that he had a sex doll," Heller confessed to the Daily Beast in April 2020.
"I found myself thinking about her a lot," Heller said. "Whereas Dan saw it as an 'it' and an object, I saw her as a person. I found myself applying a personality to her, humanizing her, and feeling jealous, asking myself: Do I live up to her? Am I as pretty as her? What does she look like? What is she like? I became obsessed with this doll, and it was taking up a lot of my mental space." As a result, the script for Dummy was born, and luckily, Harmon "loved it" and "was so supportive" of the idea.
However, the doll, Barbara, didn't get to ride off into the sunset with Harmon and Heller (pictured above). In fact, Barb is no longer in their lives. "[Dan] had his assistant bring it to some garbage dump and get rid of it," Heller explained. "So, she's in a garbage dump somewhere in a coffin-box."
Why Dummy was 'magical' to film
Anna Kendrick learned at least one thing while on the set of the Quibi series Dummy: Working alongside a doll can be tough. "When we started making this show, honestly, Cody and I thought it would be really easy to make a show where it's me acting against an inanimate object, and we just move the object around," Kendrick said on Instagram Live in April 2020.
However, the doll — a.k.a. Barbara — was actually really hard to maneuver when Kendrick first started acting alongside it. "We tried to, like, move the ... doll around in our first rehearsal to see how it would work ... that was actually a moment where I was like, 'Oh, no.' It was a sinking feeling ... It's so heavy!" Kendrick said.
Despite showrunner Cody Heller jokingly calling Barbara a "diva," the cast actually had a blast working with the doll. "It was so fun to make a show where we would have meetings and the prop mistress would go, 'Okay, so these are the dirty vaginas and these are the clean vaginas,'" Heller told the Daily Beast in April 2020. "'Would you like me to dirty this one up a bit?'"
"Such a fun, silly, delightful process," she added. "The shoot was the best 18 days of my life. We had such a magical time together."
Dummy is 'a love story' and a 'buddy comedy'
The plot for Dummy, which premiered on Quibi in April 2020, might seem a little far-fetched and quirky, but showrunner Cody Heller explained that the show is more than just Cody (Anna Kendrick) coming to terms with her boyfriend's sex doll, Barbara. In fact, it's not even about Cody's boyfriend at all.
"It really is sort of a love story between [Cody and Barbara] and a buddy comedy and Dan is the means of them meeting, but he really goes into the background," Heller told TV Insider in April 2020. "Then it is this story about these two women navigating the world together." Heller said the comedy is "a lot about feminism," which is why "there's a whole episode about trying to pass the Bechdel test," she said. "The title Dummy is not just referring to the doll."
In the end, Cody becomes more confident and sure of herself, and it's all thanks to her newfound friendship with Barbara. "As they get to know each other more and bond, it's, in a way, about falling in love with yourself and learning to communicate with yourself in a more healthy way," Heller explained. "It's really about bonding with yourself."
So, what are you waiting for? Grab the popcorn and start watching Dummy ASAP.