Charlie Brooker - Inside Black Mirror

When my agent phoned up about Black Museum , I said, “Oh yes! Is it an interesting role, though?” And she said, “Oh, it’s an interesting role, yeah…”

With film and TV scripts, it so often feels like trying to polish a turd, but Black Museum arrived complete and perfectly formed. It was as good, if not better, than any script I’ve ever been given in theatre, film or TV. There was nothing to change: the rhythms were great, the plot was there and it was laugh-out-loud funny. Absolutely terrifying too, with a political thrust.

Rolo is a wonderful creation, an extraordinary person – a storyteller with an empathic disconnect. He’s probably the most toxic person I’ve ever had to be. Just after Black Museum , I played Nixon and I’m currently playing a Guantanamo Bay torturer, but none of them come close to Rolo Haynes’ unempathetic glee. Playing him was like swallowing a small thimble of poison each morning. Every day, the whole thing felt more toxic – especially as it was essentially a black cast and Rolo was a white supremacist.

Joel Collins (series production designer):Doug literally became Rolo. I thought it was really funny, because I knew he was going Method. He’d got just into the character so deeply. And when you’re used to actors doing that, you just avoid them before they tear you apart.

Douglas Hodge:I kept myself to myself on set. I didn’t get made-up or get dressed in the same place as anyone else. I was just sort of mumbling and salivating in the corner. It’s not Method at all: I don’t stay in character the whole time, because I don’t believe in that. But especially when you’re playing someone who’s American and unlike you, you do try and stay in character as much as you can.

On the first day, Letitia came up to me and asked if I wanted to rehearse our lines. I just said no. She said, “No-one’s ever said that to me before,” and I said, “Well, there we are,” and walked away. After that, I think she was quite nervous, but I did it to help me inhabit Rolo and to help her hate him. Also, I don’t tend to want to rehearse lines much, because I’m prepared and I want to do what we do on camera, not off. If I’d been playing a different character, I’d certainly not have been so unforthcoming. But I just stayed in that mode, and whichever actors I met, I was just like, “Yeah, right, let’s just do the scene.”

Charlie Brooker:Fucking hell, that’s quite hardcore. I always find it odd when actors do that sort of thing, just because I’d find it so socially awkward I’d collapse! Letitia must’ve thought Doug was a real prick… which I can see would be helpful.

Letitia Wright:When Doug refused to ‘run’ our lines, that’s when I knew that this was getting real! I felt a bit heartbroken, but I just had to learn that Doug is Doug. He didn’t wanna hear how I was going to play Nish – he just wanted to do it in the moment, so I had to suck it up and do it. Sometimes before takes, he would look at me and growl! I was jumping out of my skin, but it really added to the whole thing. From the moment I read Rolo on the page, I hated him. Doug had to go Method, because you cannot come in and out of that character. We really got into our characters a lot, because it was so deep and there had to be so much focus and concentration.

Colm McCarthy:Letitia very much avoided Douglas between takes, but not in an arsey way – she just did what was necessary to make it real. Here’s the truth: they’re both really committed to what they’re doing, to the extent that it could be perceived as – I wouldn’t say ‘difficult’ – but not everybody would have an appetite to go there with them, when they’re really committed like that. I would work with either of them again in a heartbeat. They’re amazing actors. Even though we did some big stuff, the real tension in that episode is all in the museum. The rest of it is a story that Doug’s telling – and he had so many words, the poor guy!

Letitia Wright:Doug had to juggle my scenes, plus every single scene within the story. I gained a lot of respect for him by the end, because he is a master of what he does. He and I did have moments where we could have a laugh, but everything was so intense and we spent the majority of our time filming. Any time we had a break, he had to go and learn another five paragraphs for the next scene! So I never really got to connect with Doug outside of work, but what a phenomenal actor. If we work together in the future, I wanna get to know Doug and not Rolo Haynes!

Joel Collins:I probably didn’t help Doug’s Method acting by building that museum as a complete set.

Douglas Hodge:We walked in and the whole place was there! It was a great set, so beautiful that you could’ve literally sold tickets to the general public.

Joel Collins:By the time I’d finished with it, a lot of people thought I was utterly mentally ill, because I filled it with this hidden celebration of six years of Black Mirror .

As you went into reception, I reused the phones from Nosedive as the museum guide devices. Along the corridor, a wall of screens showed historical footage of murderers, including the couple from White Bear . There was a print on the wall of Playtest ’s Harlech House and a dummy wearing the dress from San Junipero . Then there were the plaster-cast faces of the crew, plus military gear from Men Against Fire .

Inside the museum, the smaller cabinets in the middle of the room included Playtest mushrooms, the bath from Crocodile , the scanning device from USS Callister and the White Christmas cookie-egg and headgear. One wall display had the beds from Men Against Fire with the dead bodies from Metalhead , in a set that looked like the cabin from White Christmas complete with bird-clock. We had Domhnall Gleeson’s body from Be Right Back in a padded cell. And then there was a bloated pig from Metalhead , next to a hanging man which was a recreation of the set from The National Anthem . The pig was eating sweets that Bella drops on the robot’s head in Metalhead . To be honest, I just went fucking mad.

Letitia Wright:The room I stayed away from the most, was the room that my dad Clayton was in, because I wanted to have a fresh experience when we moved behind those curtains. Other than that, I was all over the museum! It was really, really creepy: murderers, court cases, knives and stuff from Black Mirror episodes like the bees from Hated in the Nation .

Douglas Hodge:That museum became my little home, so it didn’t take much to stay in character. I would come into work, get into costume on my own, put my mic on, mumble a bit, growl at a few people, then walk into my museum! And I never left it until we finished, 12 or 14 hours later.

Colm’s a fantastic director. I really appreciated how we shot Rolo’s scenes in chronological order, starting with him younger during the ‘Pain Addict’ story. One of my favourite scenes was Rolo showing the rats to Doctor Dawson [played by Daniel Lapaine].