Charlie Brooker - Inside Black Mirror

So you can see how all these ideas lined up. At some point, they were all up on a whiteboard somewhere. The conversation became quite free-flowing as we bounced from one idea to another. And then it happened really quickly: I was talking to Annabel, going, “Ooh! Ooh! And then this would happen and that would happen!” And she almost burst into tears.

Annabel Jones:Because it was so sad. Such an emotional story.

Charlie Brooker:Back then, our characters were a man and a woman. The big twist was one of them was in a coma or dying. That was where it ended.

Annabel Jones:Once you start exploring the world, and the capabilities it offers up, you wonder what else that world might give someone that they may not have had before. Then came that idea of having a life unfulfilled, because you’ve been in a coma for 40 years, and going back to a time when maybe you couldn’t have been as sexually free as you could today. The idea just kept giving and offering opportunities.

Charlie Brooker:At some point, the thought arrived of making this a same sex couple. Rather than that feeling like a gimmick, it became both relevant and irrelevant to the story. It informed a whole other layer, because these people couldn’t have got married as two women in 1987.

Annabel Jones:I also love that this is a story about two mature women, finding each other and falling in love. And you forget that they’re old. It’s a cliché, but when you’re old you’re still mentally and emotionally alive to all experiences. It’s just your body that’s letting you down. And so to be free of that and go and fuck as much as they want, and drink as much as they want… why wouldn’t these two mature women want to be doing this? But you don’t think of virtual reality as empowering the old. So it was just such a great fusion of ideas, all coming together in an emotionally satisfying way.

Charlie Brooker:I thought people would find it more shocking or surprising, that old people had been talking to each other about fucking, but no one ever comments on it. People just accept it, which is refreshing.

As usual, I was worried, because I hadn’t really written a love story before. From Be Right Back , I learnt that if you keep it simple and you’ve got good actors, people immediately root for them and naturally care about them. Still, I was really worried that people would think it was absurd how quickly Kelly and Yorkie fall for each other. But, of course, everything gets distilled down to little moments when you’re watching works of fiction! So I had to fight a voice in my head that said, “It wouldn’t happen like that – they’ve literally met for 10 minutes.”

San Junipero saw director Owen Harris return to the Black Mirror fold, having handled Season Two’s Be Right Back .

Owen Harris (director):Strangely, I’d had a far more immediate response to the Be Right Back script. San Junipero took longer to process, to work out what the genre was, and where the gears were. It was such a great story, but there was a lot going on. The heart of it wasn’t quite so clear.

Joel Collins (series production designer):When Owen came into the office, I showed him all the visual work I’d done to express what San Junipero could be, and he loved it. We were going into the future, and also into the past, with the 80s. We looked at things like [classic 80s teen films] Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off . Once again, the goal was to settle the audience into a place they know, and give them a stereotype that they can enjoy.

Owen Harris:Bizarrely, in the end, it was the 80s setting that excited me. If you look back to a lot of films from that decade – in particular those films written or directed by John Hughes – the mood was far more optimistic, almost to the point where you could classify it as a genre. The genre of eternal optimism! Black Mirror comes from a background of satire, which is by nature somewhat cynical, and that’s why I liked the idea of adopting a positive genre to tell one of these tales.

The key choice was the casting of Gugu and Mackenzie. This would have been a far trickier piece to pull off without their thoughtful and confident approach. As soon as we attached them, I really felt we had the chance to make something special.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw: Black Mirror has always been such a dark, interesting and cool show. I loved Be Right Back . It reminded me of [the Roald Dahl 80s anthology TV show] Tales of the Unexpected , which I loved while growing up. Something about Be Right Back brought to mind that show’s dark, twisted tales such as Lamb to the Slaughter !

Mackenzie Davis (actor):When my friends and I watched the first ever episode – “the pig fucking one” as it is colloquially known – we just sat in awe at what we were seeing. It felt like the first time I saw Twin Peaks , where the rules and expectations of what a television show was and could be were exploded. When I ended up getting the offer to be a part of the show, it felt like a Twilight Zone scenario, where you step through your screen and enter the world you never thought you would participate in, beyond your own passive viewing. It was surreal.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw:I first read San Junipero on my iPhone – an act which felt very Black Mirror- esque in itself. I was waiting for a bus from Oxford Circus to Brixton, so thought I’d read a couple of pages, then read the rest when I got home. But I got so absorbed that I read the whole thing on the bus. It was so original, it blew me away. I was so drawn into the vivacity of Kelly, and the whole idea of the 80s soundtrack which was already written into the script. Something about it was very inspiring and unusual.

Mackenzie Davis:Charlie wrote Yorkie as an exquisitely brave character, in such a quiet and unusual way. When we first meet her, she seems like a shy dork with some strange mannerisms, but the more you learn about her the more it is revealed how her dress, behaviour and mere presence in this world is an act of brutal honesty, bravery and authenticity. She is one of two or three characters I feel the luckiest to have been able to be a part of.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw:Kelly leapt off the page. The script didn’t change from when I read it on my iPhone to what you see in the finished episode, in terms of the dialogue and rhythm of the characters. Knowing the twist of the story, I was conscious of bringing as much light and joy to Kelly as I could. I didn’t want to give away the fact there was anything dark about this story.

I first met Mackenzie at breakfast at the Charlotte Street Hotel, with Owen and our producer Laurie Borg. We had a chat, then did the table-read. It was all very fast. It was a real whirlwind, so I didn’t have much time with Mackenzie beforehand. As I say, thankfully the characters were so well-written and Mackenzie’s a brilliant actress. We’re still really great friends.