Charlie Brooker - Inside Black Mirror

Annabel Jones:Thankfully, on the whole we’ve been quite well received, so we’re in a fortunate position. You take huge satisfaction when people want to share their favourite episode with you. And in today’s climate, it’s a huge plus when people have even watched your show, when there’s so much to see.

On 17 September 2017, the Black Mirror team attended the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, having been nominated for three awards: Outstanding Television Movie ( San Junipero ), Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic Special (Charlie Brooker for San Junipero ) and Outstanding Cinematography for a Limited Series or Movie (Seamus McGarvey for Nosedive .)

Annabel Jones:We went out there proud of what we’d done, with nothing to lose. When you’ve got no expectations, that’s always going to be the best win. In the car on the way to the ceremony, I said to Charlie, in a kind way I thought, to calm his pre-awards nerves, “Don’t worry, you’ve got absolutely no chance of winning, because the other nominees are all big drama series writers.”

When I look at the amount of ideas, detail, concepts, creativity and characterisation that has gone into all of these films, I find it breathtaking that one person can be so prolific and have such range to take on different genres so effectively, and have a degree of humour and warmth and emotion. It is a huge skill, and to do that across multiple genres is staggering. So while I was thrilled that we won the [Outstanding Television Movie] award for San Junipero , I was especially thrilled that Charlie won the award for writing.

Charlie Brooker:I genuinely hadn’t bothered thinking of anything to say. So winning was like being smacked over the head with something, in a good way, and then immediately terrifying, because you’re live on American television in front of millions. You get up onstage and in the front row there’s like Nicole Kidman and Oprah Winfrey and Robert De Niro. That’s too weird, so you look up, and there’s just a big screen with a countdown going 38, 37, 36… basically telling you to fuck off!

Afterwards, it was really, really weird to walk around holding two Emmys. In LA, people act like you’re a medieval soldier returning to the village clutching the severed head of one of their mortal enemies. Strangers go, “Oh my god, I love your show! What is it?”

Gugu Mbatha-Raw (actor, San Junipero):It was so, so lovely to hang out with everyone again and celebrate, even though an Emmy fell on my foot at the party. I thought it was broken at first, because it instantly went blue. I’ve got this ridiculous photograph of me in high heels with an ice-pack tied onto my foot with a bandanna. But I still managed to dance a little at the party, because we were so happy. Especially for Charlie.

Mackenzie Davis (actor, San Junipero):The whole reception of the episode was beyond what any of us had anticipated, particularly because it was such a cult show – in America at least – prior to getting the reach that Netflix affords. So the arc of making it, and feeling so lucky to be involved with this beautiful thing in the first place, to watching people react in the way they did, and then culminating with this very public acknowledgement… it was a series of unexpected and lovely events.

Annabel Jones:Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is a Place On Earth came on at the Netflix aftershow party. That was a big moment.

Charlie Brooker:How’s this for a first world problem? I walked into the governor’s ball, dying for a drink. People had trays of champagne, but I couldn’t take one because I had an Emmy in each hand. So I actually had a moment of slight annoyance. What a prick! But genuinely, as somebody who tends to worry about things a lot, the Emmys was unequivocally a nice thing.

In Conversation

Charlie Brooker – co-writer and executive producer

Annabel Jones – executive producer

William Bridges – co-writer

Toby Haynes – director

Cristin Milioti – actor

Jina Jay – series casting director

Joel Collins – series production designer

Louise Sutton – producer

Russell McLean – VFX producer

Daniel Pemberton – composer

Maja Meschede – costume designer

Tanya Lodge – hair and make-up designer

Russell Dodgson – creative director, Framestore

When Nanette Cole lands a job at the games company Callister Inc, she has no idea that chief technical officer Robert Daly has sinister plans for her DNA. Horrified to wake up as a virtual clone of herself aboard the USS Callister spaceship, where Captain Daly lives out his macho fantasies, Nanette must inspire the despondent crew members to help her escape this digital torture chamber.

Charlie Brooker:While filming Playtest , we’d talked about special effects in general, saying, “Wouldn’t it be good if we could do an episode set in space.” So one vague story at the back of my mind – normal person becomes powerful monster in VR kingdom – collided with the idea of an episode set in space.

Annabel Jones: Black Mirror set in space! What’s not to like? We got to delve into a whole new genre for us, a space opera, and run lots of contemporary themes through it. Of course there was a nervousness, because even though the piece is about technology giving someone ultimate power, it is a classic sci-fi homage and we didn’t want to mess that up! It was ambitious, it was a romp, it was our most comedic episode. A biggie!

Charlie Brooker:The notion that Daly had themed his world around this fictional vintage show called Space Fleet came in relatively late. That felt quite interesting because it became a comment on people going, “How dare there be female Ghostbusters .” My co-writer Will Bridges is a big fan of Star Trek , which helped. I know a lot of stuff, but can’t automatically pull on a lot of the tropes.

William Bridges (co-writer):If I’m being honest, I consider Galaxy Quest to be a bigger influence on USS Callister than anything from the Trek universe. That 1999 film is about a group of people unwittingly pulled into a Star-Trek -like world. They initially freak out and try to escape until they realise the only way to succeed is to embrace their role within that world…

Charlie had the premise of a guy stealing people’s identities so he can control them in his own digital world. He also had Nanette’s character and knew he wanted her to escape in a big action set piece, but the rest was up for grabs. We chatted about the fun that could be had with your digital self trying to contact your real self, and how the best person to blackmail you is you. The first draft seemed to write itself. It’s probably the first and only time I’d ever written a script and knew it was good. Most times you hope – maybe even suspect – it’s good, but this one felt good straight away.

Toby Haynes (director):I’d been aware of Black Mirror from the first episode, but when it came on TV I was always either working on Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell or doing a movie in New Zealand. I wasn’t that excited to receive the script, because it seemed like familiar territory after having done Doctor Who . But my agent said it was one of the best he’d read in a long time, and he was not wrong! I realised we were looking at a very classy, well-thought-out and intelligent show. It was absolutely up my street.