Charlie Brooker - Inside Black Mirror

Penn Jillette (co-story writer):In 1981, while touring with [art collective] The Residents in Barcelona, I became as sick as I’ve ever been in my life. I developed an extremely high fever and was in a huge amount of pain. During my stay in a filthy hospital where no-one spoke English, I hallucinated the entire story of The Pain Addict – the prose version of which ended up being used as filler material in a magic book that [my magic partner] Teller and I wrote.

Because I loved Black Mirror , a friend put me in touch with Charlie. We met at a cafe along the Thames, right in the shadow of Big Ben. I blew him for half an hour about how great he was and how Black Mirror was the greatest show ever. I mean, I told the truth but it was still fairly embarrassing. After about 45 minutes, I told him that I hadn’t intended to pitch him anything, but I had an idea that didn’t fit anywhere. With a great deal of humility, Charlie said, “Feel free to pitch – I’ve been out of ideas since the first season!” So I told him the whole story of The Pain Addict.

Charlie Brooker:When people pitch us ideas, often they’ll over-think it. Or they’ll tell you what it’s about in the first paragraph, when you want the elevator pitch. Penn was one of the few people who actually just told a story that was refreshingly high-concept and a popcorn movie crowd-pleaser. We had to work on his story to make it fit. If you read his original story, it’s quite different. I mean, it’s incredibly grim.

Penn Jillette:Charlie was wicked-honest. He said that after months and months of no contact, he’d get in touch with me in a panic and say they had 10 days until they shoot, then he’d suck everything from me that he could and disappear again. I thought he was being cute and hyperbolic, but it was literally true!

To give you an idea of my input, we kicked around the ideas for a few hours of Skype and phone. It was so glorious to feel understood and to have someone build on your ideas, instead of acting like they haven’t heard a word you said!

The final credit very kindly says, ‘Story by Penn Jillette,’ but Charlie changed the original story so much that it should really be a co-credit. He made it different from my idea, and 1000 times better for Black Mirror .

I will add I’m not as gracious as I sound. If someone else had taken that story and changed it as much as Charlie did, there might have been resentment and sadness. But his vision is so pure. He took my idea, and turned it into his idea, in such a completely pure way, that what I personally see in that story is a conversation with Charlie, about what it means to share pain with someone else.

Colm McCarthy (director):I think Penn also seeded something into Black Museum about Rolo Haynes – the idea that any showman is trying to frighten and entertain an audience in equal measures.

Charlie Brooker:Because of Penn, I thought, “What if the person who binds these three stories together is a bit like someone running a sideshow?” A larger-than-life character who’s a bit like a carnival barker – or ‘carnival talker’ as Penn told me they’re called. So we wanted a showman.

Penn Jillette:Charlie did talk about the framing mechanism he wanted to do, and we talked about museums in Vegas, but whatever is great about Black Museum , that’s Charlie.

I desperately wanted to play the lead character Rolo, even though it would have cost an extraordinary amount of money for me and Teller to cancel our Las Vegas shows during the Black Museum shoot. My carnival background is that guy. I’m a fire-eater, a talker, I’m all of that stuff. Charlie and Annabel were so kind. Charlie basically told me they had a really great director and they wanted to let him do whatever he wanted. Also, reading between the lines, the actor Colm McCarthy wanted was better than me! I do fancy, though, that Charlie took a few of my rhythms and style in the way that he wrote Rolo. Please do not disabuse me of this, because it’s an important part of my life!

Charlie Brooker:Not only will I not disabuse Penn of this notion, I will reaffirm it. Rolo’s rhythms were heavily modelled on the way I’d seen Penn speak, both in the Penn & Teller stage act and their Showtime documentary series Bullshit .

Annabel Jones:Douglas Hodge is a multi-talented actor, who’s won a ridiculous number of awards for his theatre work including La Cage Aux Folles and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory . For a lot of the film, Rolo is in his museum and quite stationary, presenting the story behind an exhibit. From a directorial and performance point of view, that’s quite limiting, so we needed an actor who could give a big performance and own his space. Doug had to hold the narrative of the film together with Letitia Wright, who was also just amazing.

Charlie Brooker:Letitia and Doug are good examples of very different performers, from very different acting backgrounds, who are both just so watchable every moment they’re onscreen. There’s constantly something going on. We’d wanted Letitia before for a part in Season Three, but something happened with her availability, so it was really fortuitous that the role of Nish came along at the right time. She’d just finished shooting in [the 2018 Marvel superhero blockbuster] Black Panther .

Annabel Jones:When Letitia did a self-tape audition for us, we were mesmerised by her performance because she gave it so much more than what was on the page. Like most actors, she had someone off-screen reading in the other lines, but we were distracted by this person’s voice… because it was Daniel Kaluuya, who was starring in Black Panther with her!

Letitia Wright (actor):We were two or three weeks away from wrapping on Black Panther , and I needed someone to read with. Who could’ve been better than Daniel? I call him “the O.G. of Black Mirror ”, because he’s one of the first people to be in that show. The ‘pig’ story kinda threw me back then, so the first time I really paid attention to Black Mirror was Fifteen Million Merits with Daniel, which I really liked. The more the show went on and gained that cult following, the more I understood it.

Altogether, I’d had six months on Black Panther , then went straight into Black Museum with one week to learn everything and early morning call-times again. I was knackered, man! There were times when I thought I was gonna fall over, but I didn’t say anything, because I really wanted to play Nish.

‘Well, just us two this morning. You sure you wanna do this? This place ain’t for the faint-hearted’

Douglas Hodge (actor):I couldn’t have been more of a Black Mirror fan. Just like everyone else, I binge my way through the great things that turn up on TV in this era, and Black Mirror ’s top of my list. Having said that, there are episodes that I watch from behind the sofa. I’m a huge, huge fan of Charlie Brooker and I think the writing’s phenomenal. So I was already on board, before I even knew Black Mirror was coming to me.