Cheryl Itamura is the star of “Planet News Now with Kimi Sato,” a reconception of her daily video news on SonomaSun.com, which launches today. In the faux news series, penned by Daedalus Howell, Itamura portrays Kimi Sato, an intergalactic space vixen and broadcast personality who reports on global news from the vantage of a satellite orbit.

DH: You have described yourself as a “multipurpose person,” yet consistently I’ve found you drawn back to the arts. Why?

CI: That’s where all the crazy people are.

DH: Are you attracted to the crazy people because you’re one of them, or are you sane and it’s one of those “in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king” deals?

CI: It’s like my outgoing phone message. If you call my phone, right now it says, “Please leave a uniquely informative, fascinating, intriguing or mentally stimulating message, or simply hang up.”

DH: When I first head that, I felt a little on the spot.

CI: I get a lot of apologies. A lot of people will say, “I’m sorry, I can’t think of anything” and go click – I won’t even know who called. It screens it out so in the end, I only get the crazy people.

DH: You’re not using crazy in the pejorative sense of the word but in the “mad-genius” way, right?

CI: Of course. Crazy people are fun.

DH: Do you count yourself among their numbers?

CI: I’d like to think of myself as fun. I don’t know if the rest of the world thinks I’m fun.

DH: Perhaps funny, or fun-esque? Did you want to be this when you grew up?

CI: Actually, I wanted to be and still want to be a cartoon character, or a Muppet puppet, or I would love to be a 3-D animation character or Robin Williams. Or the queen of a small European nation. Any of those would satisfy me completely in life.

DH: I would suggest taking Robin Williams off the list – we’ve already got one – but the Muppet Queen of Malta, that has a ring to it.

CI: Growing up, my idols were Trixie, Speedracer’s girlfriend, and Miss Piggy from the Muppets. Not only does she have a cool attitude, I love her hair. Big hair is big with me.

DH: I’ve noticed.

CI: The bigger the better. You know that little fashion designer chick in the Incredibles?

DH: The one styled after Edith Head, the costumer designer from Paramount and Universal?

CI: Yes. She’s one of my idols. And Princess Grace of Monaco, maybe.

DH: What about Princess Leia?

CI: Anyone that has the potential of being the queen of anything.

DH: I’ve never thought of you as particularly megalomaniacal, but you do seem to have ambition.

CI: You mean taking over European nations and later the world?

DH: I think the last guy who tried that was Hitler.

CI: Okay, cut that. But ambition, that’s a word that’s new to my vocabulary in terms of describing myself. I’ll have to think about that.

DH: I thought you were intrinsically ambitious. Perhaps you haven’t faced it yet?

CI: Yeah, I guess I haven’t ’fessed up to it.

DH: Ambition is okay.

CI: I guess that’s what it boils down to. This is a good therapy session. Thank you.

DH: I recognize these things having gone through a similar gauntlet. I think my brand initiative has been going to plan. Interestingly, your brand is about to change isn’t it?

CI: This is true. If your brand is “Daedalus Howell” that makes my brand “Cheryl Itamura” at the moment, but I’m adding a new franchise – “Kimi Sato.”

DH: Now, the name has provenance for you, it’s not just out of the blue.

CI: My middle name is Kimie, which in Japanese means “She who is without equal.” [laughing] You would think that most Japanese girls’ names mean “cherry blossom flower,” or “snowflake.”

DH: Your mom was thinking ahead.

CI: Anything I’m about – yeah, it’s my mom. And Sato is my mom’s maiden name. “She who is without equal,” that’s my new brand.

DH: How different is the Kimi Sato character from Cheryl Itamura?

CI: [Laughing] Not a whole lot, actually.

DH: Yeah, it seems like she’s you with a different name and the fact we’re pretending she’s in outer-space.

CI: Pretending? You mean, I’m not really going to outer-space?

DH: Perhaps an outer-space state of mind.

CI: I go there quite frequently, actually. It’s a good fit.