Let's Get Unsettled With An AMA From the Showrunners of 'Black Mirror'

By Jodi Smith | reddit | October 25, 2016 |

By Jodi Smith | reddit | October 25, 2016 |

The latest season of Black Mirror premiered on October 21st on Netflix, allowing the masses to gorge themselves on the twisted, unnerving series. This season focuses on technology, so it seems apropos for reddit to host a Q&A with the showrunners Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones.

SPOILERS AHOY

Do you guys find it at all ironic that your show is presented in a format the captivates peoples attentions for hours of the day, somewhat similar to your portrayal of technology in the past seasons? - PieRobot

RESUME VIEWING

In this season we have noticed a few Easter eggs in some of the episodes. Can we expect future episodes to have crossovers? - inthenameofpooh

Which Easter eggs did you notice? There’s one (in one former ep) that no-one’s ever found…

How is it transferring a show from being a pure British one to an American/British mix? Any noticeable differences? - Schmitty422

It broadens the kind of stories you can do. San Junipero set in the UK wouldn’t have been so evocative of the era, for instance. We did actually discuss it — could we set it in Brighton in the 80s we wondered — but a sort of notional California just seemed right.

Was “Heaven is A Place on Earth” the partial inspiration for San Junipero or did someone just do an incredible job sourcing music for the soundtrack?? - ElegantWaste

I can’t recall when it came into the process, but I was running and it came up on a Spotify 1987 playlist I’d put together. And I sort of went “FUCKING HELL THAT’S PERFECT”. But not out loud. And then I couldn’t relax until I KNEW it was cleared.

Ditto “Livin’ in a Box”

Firstly thanks for making one of the most captivating and thought provoking series of the last decade or so, secondly based on the below can we assume that all the episodes take place in the same universe or were these easter eggs placed in the show for fans? - AbeFromanXI

They take place in the same psychological universe, certainly. There are sometimes explicit links, eg in Hated in the Nation, Blue worked on the Rannoch case (he was Victoria Skillane’s boyfriend, mentioned in White Bear).

Was there ever any concept/story that you passed on or didn’t follow through with because it was too depressing? - Wonsan

In an early draft of White Christmas Oona Chaplin’s character (Greta) had a kid — there was a scene in which ‘Cookie Greta’ saw ‘Real Greta’ reading a story to her son, and then realised she’d never hold or truly ‘be with’ her kid again. But it was so totally bleak it overpowered everything else so we GOT RID OF THE KID.

(She was called Greta because there were two of her and ‘Greta minds think alike’. Ha. Ha.)

I was wondering if you ever thought about fucking up with the audience? Like having different ends or scenes depending on the day of the week someone is watching, or maybe deleting scenes after a few days and watching people freaking out about it on twitter? - NasKe

Have thought about that with Playtest (wanted to do a ‘Nightmare mode’ for people watching it a second time — with different fourth-wall breaking scenes). But it was just too logistically complicated. We may revisit the idea tho.

Why is this entire series based around the premise, ‘What if Phones, but too much?’ - Nishyyyy

That line appears in Hated in the Nation. We’re actually pro-technology, promise. The show isn’t anti-tech — we LOVE all the product and UI design. It’s not waving a fist at the iCloud. It’s a mix of human stories and sometimes funhouse twist-in-the-tale stuff. The people who think it’s grumpy are the grumpy ones. Boo to those people. Booooo.

Annabel just said “really?” as I typed that.

There’s much, much more to sift through over at reddit, so head over there if you are craving more.