After four years when everything’s seemed like a “Black Mirror” episode, Netflix’s British anthology series has returned with a sixth season, and its most meta story ever: An ordinary woman’s life crumbles around her when her everyday existence is turned into a prestige streaming drama.
Annie Murphy, the “Schitt’s Creek” Emmy winner who plays the embattled title character of “Joan Is Awful,” doesn’t think she’d handle that situation as well as Joan does: “I would just be locked in a dark closet sobbing and unable to go on.”
The new five-episode season of “Mirror” (now streaming), which features twisted tales where bad things are caused by new technology, is meant to “go back to basics and slightly rethink what ‘Black Mirror’ is, on some level,” says creator/writer Charlie Brooker. “Nowadays there’s a lot of shows that are full of people surrounded by chrome and glass crying as an app destroys their life.”
One new chapter (“Loch Henry”) digs into true-crime obsessions, while another (“Demon 79”) is a 1970s English horror throwback. “Joan Is Awful” is a classic “Black Mirror” episode: Joan works in middle management at a tech company and comes home after a particularly troubling day to find that the top new show on the Netflix-like service Streamberry is an embellished view of her own life, starring Salma Hayek.
Depression and panic attacks ensue when the world tunes in, and Joan ends up fighting back in a darkly comic satire that tackles social media, AI in entertainment, deepfake technology and image rights.
Even more meta for yours truly: In one scene, a copy of the USA TODAY entertainment section touts the “Joan” show’s success ― Brooker calls it “a loving homage” ― while another features an awesome shoutout all Brians will appreciate.
Brooker says “Joan Is Awful” spawned from the idea of a 24-hour streaming deepfake news network with “overtly fictionalized content but starring politicians”; the thought of an average woman waking up to find herself on the cover of a newspaper with the headline “Joan is awful”; and a recent rash of TV dramas dramatizing events and people of the recent past. Brooker and his wife were watching Hulu’s “The Dropout,” about Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, and he imagined “an episode of ‘The Dropout’ where she switches on the TV and sees ‘The Dropout’ has launched.”
“Black Mirror” usually leans prescient in its storytelling, and “Joan Is Awful” arrives just as AI has become one of the hottest topics in Hollywood. (The episode was shot last fall, weeks before the launch of ChatGPT software.) It’s “so beyond relevant right now,” Murphy says, “and just the lack of control that people already have over their image and their story, it’s certainly not getting any better, and it’s getting in fact a lot worse at an exponential rate.” She hasn’t really thought about how AI could affect her on a personal or professional level, “but I think so much more could go wrong before that happens.”
A longtime “Black Mirror” fan, Murphy’s jaw “just kept dropping and dropping” until she got to a wild scene set at a church: “I was like, ‘If this isn’t the part for me, I don’t know what is.” At her wit’s end, Joan decides to create a bit of chaos that a big star like Hayek would never let go to air (and of course, it ends up playing to the entire globe) involving a cheerleader outfit, several burgers, a full bottle of laxative and a wedding. “It was so beautifully blasphemous and funny and over the top,” Murphy says.
Where to find it:‘Black Mirror’ Season 6 available to stream on Netflix June 15: Cast, episodes and more
That day of filming was “just full of cackles, and we all reverted to grade four and our potty humor just took all of us over in the most beautiful way,” says Murphy, who adds that Hayek did her take of the scene (since TV Joan mirrors what real Joan does) right afterward. “Of course, she looks like somehow she’s on the cover of Vanity Fair while she’s doing it, and then I’m just like a hot sweaty mess.”
The extreme situations in which “Black Mirror” characters find themselves are usually awful, outrageous and/or terrifying, and Brooker often taps into his comedy background (including writing for British late-night shows and sitcoms in the 2000s) for those gags. He refers to a tweet people often show him: “‘Black Mirror’ is written by one stoned British dude who sits around going, ‘What if your mum ran on batteries?’” “It’s not that far from the truth,” Brooker says, laughing. “Apart from the stoned bit. I can’t do that anymore.”
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“Joan Is Awful” definitely goes off the rails. But Murphy ponders what an episode of “Annie Is Awful” would be like.
“It would be so dull,” she says. “There would be a lot of sitting on the couch watching ‘Below Deck.’ There would be a lot of long walks around the neighborhood petting any dog she found. Truly, that’s it. So I’m really glad it’s Joan and not Annie. Because we have something a lot more riveting with Joan.”
