Charlie Brooker - Inside Black Mirror

I was anxious about meeting Charlie. I always thought he’d be quite fierce and sarcastic and angry, and he’s not at all. He’s quite geeky and incredibly generous with his sense of humour. He clearly has a very sharp intellect, but he doesn’t need to be the funniest person in the room – he wants you to be as funny as he is. I’ve never laughed as much with my execs as I did on Black Mirror . I’ve also never been under so much scrutiny, but they still allow you to have your head. You can win arguments.

Cristin Milioti (actor):I was in the madness of post-production on a show I’d written, when I was asked to put myself on tape reading three pages of USS Callister . They were very secretive and wouldn’t talk about the role of Nanette at all. I read the scene and thought, “God, I have no idea what this means, but I’m really into it.” It was beautifully written, but there was zero context. There was a scene in which Nanette blackmails herself, and also talk of a wormhole, so I was very confused.

Annabel Jones:We probably only gave her a few pages to try and minimise the chance of any spoilers getting out. That explains why she took the role! She obviously had no idea how bad it was going to be. That’ll teach her.

Cristin was just so annoyingly good, it had to be her. She was everyone’s firm favourite from the start. She had loads of energy, she could handle the comedy, she had a great look for the era but crucially she didn’t let the mind-bending elements ever veer into silly. She kept it real.

Of course, we were thrilled when Jesse came on board… no pun intended. He has such unbelievable range. We knew he could embrace the broader comedy at the top of the film and play the meek, invisible Daly in the office, then deliciously subvert his power and create something horribly sinister.

Jesse’s fiancée Kirsten Dunst was on set with him and asked whether she could be an extra in the background at the Callister offices. Quite a few people spotted her on screen when the show went out.

Jina Jay (series casting director):I cast Jesse based on my instinct about his body of work. When Annabel and Charlie had a great Skype with him, he was clear that he wanted to commit to the role based on trusting them. We didn’t have a director at that point. Jesse is able to inhabit complex roles with substantial characterisation: he elevates what is already on the page with modesty and restraint. Plus he is an actor who is never afraid to embrace the less likeable aspects of humanity.

Annabel Jones:Jina did an amazing job on USS Callister . We were so pleased that Michaela Coel, who had made such an impression in her role as an airport clerk in Nosedive , agreed to come back to play Shania. She’s so innately funny she can make pressing a button on a control panel hilarious. And Jimmi Simpson so skilfully navigated his character Walton through the comedy of the early scenes, where he’s the jerk CEO in the office, through the fear of being Daly’s plaything on the spaceship to then breaking our hearts by sacrificing himself at the end. The cast were wonderful. It was great fun.

Cristin Milioti:When I read the full script, I could have wept. In fact, I think I did weep. I’d waited my whole life to play something that expansive – to get to play two different roles and two different genres. I remember bracing myself in case a second draft changed everything, because it was one of the most exciting things I’d ever read.

I didn’t know Star Trek whatsoever. I was familiar with a William Shatner [who played Captain Kirk in the TV series] impression and knew who Spock was, but that was it. I watched about two seconds of the vintage episodes, but then stopped myself because actually Nanette wouldn’t know.

Joel Collins (series production designer):Much as with Fifteen Million Merits , we were back to trying to achieve what seemed impossible for a single drama. We knew early on that we were going to go to space, so we took the time to give USS Callister what it needed. I brought in crew from Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy : people who really knew the genre.

Louise Sutton (producer):I chose a couple of baskets for us to put all our eggs in. We weren’t going to build a whole spaceship, so we put everything into the ship’s bridge and corridors. Originally there was a canteen area, but the bridge became our home and stage. We did go stir crazy on that bridge, but we laughed all day, every day.

The opening sequence wrong-foots viewers by presenting Captain Daly (played by Jesse Plemons) and his crew on the bridge of the USS Callister , stylised like a 1960s episode of Star Trek , as the villainous Valdack (Billy Magnussen) attacks them.

Charlie Brooker:We do this little spoof Star Trek thing at the start and enjoy mocking some tropes… and then we use all of them later, kind of unironically! That’s the very definition of a cunt having their cake and eating it, isn’t it? But if we’d had space opera tropes at the end, without mocking them at the start, it might have felt cheesy.

Joel Collins:We worried someone would think our 60s-style Callister set was rubbish and not get the joke. It’s a risk, but it was meant as an homage.

Russell McLean (VFX producer):For that opening sequence, the CG spacecraft shots had to look like they were made using the same techniques as early Star Trek , when they filmed models on fishing wire in a studio. Making something in CG look bad on purpose felt surprisingly challenging.

Charlie Brooker:I did wonder what the logic was, of doing things like deliberately presenting Valdack’s ship with shonky special effects. But Toby was right to say that the opening is Daly’s perception of what happens in that game. And in his head, it emotionally looks and feels like the original show.

Joel Collins:At least, at the end, when the USS Callister becomes like the [director of the 2009 and 2011 Star Trek films] JJ Abrams version, you suddenly go, “Fuck me, that’s a good spaceship.” It’s the same ship, but with all different lightings, props and details. So it goes from oranges, reds and silly colours at the start, with funny lighting, to being really slick by the finale.

Charlie Brooker:The only thing that worried me was the idea of Star Trek fans thinking we were having a go at them, which wasn’t the intention. But I haven’t really been aware of anyone thinking that, because it’s clear that Daly is the problem.

I suppose you could say we took a risk by asking the audience to invest in the fates of digital characters. When Nanette wakes up in the game, if you feel like she isn’t real and it doesn’t matter, then you wouldn’t care. But we thought that if you follow her waking up on the ship and wondering where the fuck she is, then you should care, because she’ll react like she’s real.