[This story contains major spoilers for season seven, episode two of Black Mirror, “Bête Noire.”]
Charlie Brooker is back and doing what he does best — messing with parallel universes.
That’s the case, at least, in Netflix‘s shiny new season of Black Mirror. In the season seven episode “Bête Noire,” we follow Siena Kelly (Domino Day, Temple) as confectionary whizz Maria. She works as a high-flying development executive at a chocolate company, but things start to go awry when a woman she knew at school, Verity (Rosy McEwen), shows up for a focus group tasting session.
Maria is unsettled further when McEwen’s character, a computer genius, joins her team at work. Everyone else appears to adore Verity, but Maria is more suspicious. As she begins to lose her mind — facts she long-believed to be true are contorted without explanation — Verity is revealed to have made a device capable of transferring her and Maria to parallel universes. The truth is entirely at her will, and while working alongside Maria, Verity is revealed to be one of her childhood bullies on a revenge mission.
“It’s silly and ridiculous and wild,” McEwen tells The Hollywood Reporter about her Black Mirror outing. “It’s unnerving and weird, but it’s wonderful and campy and over the top.”
The actress, a British Independent Film Award recipient for her portrayal in Blue Jean and set to play a younger Nicole Kidman in the titular role of Prime Video’s Scarpetta, talks to THR about sinking her teeth into Brooker’s sci-fi series.
Below, in an interview that took place ahead of season seven’s release, McEwen discusses Black Mirror getting back to its British roots, what she would do with Verity’s reality-warping pendant and the one bit of context Brooker gave the two stars of “Bête Noire” that explained everything: “That just released everything for both of us. We were like, ‘Ohhhhhhh, so this is all completely playing off a ridiculous quality!’”
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Your episode iss so good. Top-notch. It felt really reminiscent of earlier Black Mirror seasons.
Oh, yay! That’s so nice. I haven’t actually seen it.
Oh! When will you watch it?
When it comes out!
Are you so excited?
Yes and no. It’s always nice to watch it [before it airs]. I would have liked to have done that, just to mentally prepare myself for what’s about to be released into the world. The thing is, I trust Charlie and the team so fully that I can’t imagine it would ever be totally awful. They know exactly what they’re doing. It’s such a well-oiled machine. So my trust is so strong in them.
How did Verity enter your life? Did you audition?
Yeah, I got [asked] to audition, to send a tape in. And I read the episode. That scene where she’s drinking the milk, I thought, “I want to do that so badly.” She was so fun to play, and the moment I read it, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it, which is such a freeing place to be because it means you can really play and let go. So I sent a tape in, then went in for a recall, met everyone. I left the first recall and I really thought they weren’t interested!
It was so quick, which is usually a sign that they’re [not interested]. I was like, “Okay, cool. They’re not into my vibe, fine.” So then when I got a second recall, I was really surprised. That was a chemistry read with me and Siena. And and we had chemistry very quickly. I mean, she’s so good. We found it so easy to do our scenes together, and that obviously really helped. And then it actually ended up being one of the calmest, most easy going sets I’ve ever been on.
How so?
I think because it’s such a beloved project, it’s already really found its feet and its foundations and the vision is so clear. It’s Charlie’s vision ultimately, and everyone knows what that is. So when everyone is heading for the same thing, it feels calm. Whereas indie film sets or sets for a new project, there’s a level of nerves, because you’re like, “What’s this going to be? Is it going to work?” Everyone’s micromanaging every element of it. But with this, it was just so relaxed.
Charlie’s reputation precedes him, I’m sure. Were you a Black Mirror fan before this?
Yes! I mean, they freaked me out. I’m such a sensitive soul. I wasn’t the one to sit and digest the whole series in one go. It was very much a dip in and out of because I found them so affecting. They’re so deep because his characters are so human and real. The world he creates, the beginning of every episode, you completely buy into it. As an actor, it’s a joy to say his words, because they come so easily. It’s very easy to play the characters he writes. And then you get sucked into these worlds that feel very relevant or relatable. Then as the weirdness starts, it creeps up on you. It leaves you feeling so unnerved.
That first ever episode, I don’t know if you’ve seen the earlier ones, when it was on Channel 4…
I have.
The one with the pig, the Rory Kinnear one. Oh, my God. I think about that maybe once every couple of months. It haunted me. (Laughs) Someone showed it to me and I said, “Why have you shown me that? Why have you released that into the ether?” But, how incredible for something to have that much power? There’s no show like it.
Charlie builds these words so succinctly to fit everything in in the space of 50 minutes or so. He’s always been a visionary, but now — years after the show first aired — do you think it feels like things are really hitting home with the rise of artificial intelligence, for example?
I actually think Charlie’s relationship to technology is a very, very positive one. I don’t think he’s saying, “Warning, warning! This is all awful. Be scared.” He looks at it with sunnier disposition. I feel like he’s just showing us an insight. I don’t think it has to necessarily be this really scary thing. Our episode, in particular, he describes it as a romp. (Laughs) It’s silly and ridiculous and wild. It’s unnerving and weird but it’s wonderful and campy and over the top. And I think that is his humor as well. He does find all this completely funny, and I think finding the humor in the darkness is another thing he’s leaning towards and showing us — and I think that’s also important for us right now.
I understand, like not every episode is a bleak foreboding. This one, especially the end, is a bit silly. Did you have any sympathy for Verity along the way?
Well, interestingly enough, when we first got into rehearsals, me and Sienna were asking all these really in-depth questions about the character. We had our notebooks, and we were like, “Yeah, but why? What do they mean? What was said at school?” We were trying to get all these details in and both of us were slightly struggling to get our head around who these people were and the intensity of what ends up happening. How do they get from the A to B? Maybe they’re really good people, and they’re just trying their best.
Then Charlie said to us, “No, they’re just really petty.” And that just released everything for both of us. We were like, “Ohhhhhhh, so this is all completely playing off a ridiculous quality that all of us, as humans, [have].” We can’t help that we all have these feelings, but we wouldn’t buy into them as much, whereas Verity just buys into her pettiness like nothing else. That’s probably the beauty of these episodes, it starts very human, but the ridiculousness the world’s come to… It should be laughed at. It should be labelled as ridiculous and one step too far.
Rosy McEwen (left) with Siena Kelly.
Nick Wall/Netflix
It must have been the most fun to shoot.
So fun. I loved it. And Toby [Haynes], our director, was saying, “Go madder, weirder. Go for it.” Because I was trying to toe the line between her being this believable, sweet person and then also her strangeness. How far can we push it? [Siena & I] pulled back. But as the takes went on, [Haynes] would be like, “Go even weirder.” I’d be like, “Really?” It was just super freeing.
If you had that pendant of Verity’s, what would be the first parallel universe you’d go to?
I was asked this quite a lot and I kept going between things. Really simple things like, just getting all your house chores done. Really basic stuff that is incredibly boring like changing your bed sheets, but ultimately, wouldn’t that be the most freeing and satisfying thing? On a bigger scale, just in my lunch break, I’d love to change my reality to being on the beach for 10 minutes. Then be able to come back again. Teleportation. Really milking every minute of my life.
I mean, Verity’s literally immortal right? It’s almost the most powerful advancement we’ve seen in the entire series.
(Laughs) Because it’s infinite, right? It just keeps going. The possibilities are endless. Like, there’s me thinking I can just get my bed sheets changed but you can cure cancer, change global warming.
I feel like I could watch a whole separate show about Verity’s jaunts into other universes.
There is that scene where you see all the things that she’s done — got together with Harry Styles, become an astronaut and all that stuff. And yet, still, it’s the pettiness from school that she comes back to.
Did you meet any of the other cast members from this season? Have you seen any of the other episodes yet?
I don’t know anything about it. We were all kept very much in the dark. Mine and Siena’s, we filmed that first, like a year and a half ago. We didn’t know how many there were. We didn’t know who else was in it. We were early on in the process, and then the moment we wrapped, we didn’t hear anything about it until everyone else did. We only find out the cast when you guys did.
Oh, wow. And you’re a Brit, so I wonder what you make of the criticism from viewers that Black Mirror had become a little American-ized in recent seasons. Or drifted from those British roots.
I actually hadn’t thought about the British, American united front on Black Mirror at all. I hadn’t really considered that. What I will say, at Netflix, everyone really trusts Charlie. Sometimes I imagine when shows get bigger or they go on to different platform, there’s a lot more cooks in the kitchen, but that really isn’t the case here. So just because there’s episodes that happen to be set in America with American actors, the vision is still down to Charlie, and I think they’ve always honored that. Yeah. And then I had another point.
What do you think the reaction to yours and Siena’s episode will be?
It’s funny because me and Sienna kept saying, “God, I hope people enjoy ours.” Because it’s a bit silly, it’s not as techie and not necessarily the most unnerving. It’s not the Rory Kinnear episode. You’re not leaving troubled. And then we decided, actually, isn’t that great? There’s always room for fun and silliness and laughter in even in the darkest, weirdest situations. I think that’s always Charlie’s message.
What kind of BTS can you share? Did you take home a pendant? Are you and Siena bonded for like?
We actually are bonded for life. We adore each other. The first scene that we shot was the final scene. So we very quickly were like, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s jump in.” Our chemistry was super easy to find.
Props to you guys because that must have been crazy diving right into the grand finale.
It was daunting, obviously. But then there is something about nerves at the beginning or the initial energy where you think, ‘Okay great, I can just use everything I’m feeling and put it into this.’ Luckily, me and Siena got on so well, because that’s the worry with doing things at the end first. If you haven’t developed any relationship or history or chemistry.
The chemistry is so there. The milk scene is so good.
Oh, my God. My parents are gonna be like, “Who are you?”
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Black Mirror season seven is now streaming on Netflix. Check THR‘s series ranking of all episodes, including season seven, and our interview with Charlie Brooker and Jessica Rhoades.