From the moment Rashida Jones first watched the U.K. version of Black Mirror in 2011, she had to know more about its creator, English screenwriter Charlie Brooker.
“I muscled my way into his life,” the self-professed Black Mirror superfan says with a laugh. “I had a friend who knew him and worked with him, and I asked if I could email him, then I just cold-emailed Charlie. We were friendly for a couple of years, so when he did his first season [of Black Mirror] with Netflix, he called me to ask if I wanted to write ‘Nosedive.’ ”
The episode, starring Bryce Dallas Howard, about a society in which people are rated on their every social interaction — which in turn affects their socioeconomic status — was one of the most-talked-about of season three. Audiences have had a similar response to season seven’s “Common People,” in which Jones steps in front of the camera as Amanda Waters, a teacher who, after suffering a brain tumor, gets a second chance at life through a health tech startup app, Rivermind, only to be met with ever-increasing subscription upcharges to maintain a reasonable quality of life.
“It was a really nice surprise to just get an offer,” says Jones of being on the receiving end of an email from Brooker this time. “I was in anyway just because it’s Black Mirror, but I felt well suited for the script, and it was a challenge in a way because it was a lot of things that I’ve never done before as an actor.”
Jones reunites with her Cuban Fury co-star Chris O’Dowd for the emotionally taxing episode. O’Dowd plays Amanda’s loving husband, Mike Waters, a welder who starts making money on the side through the streaming site “Dum Dummies,” which pays users to undertake dangerously humiliating dares, to keep up with Amanda’s Rivermind expenses as they balloon from an initial $300 a month to $1,800 a month for the Lux tier. Without the funds, Amanda is subject to repeated downgrades that limit her travel coverage area, require her to sleep up to 16 hours a day and cause her to spew Alexa-like voice ads during routine conversation.
“There was a lot going on with her because she has so many modes,” says Jones of her character. “There’s kind of the normal relationship mode, which I think the most important part was just for Chris and me to feel like we were in a real, authentic, meaningful relationship. Without that, you can’t really have all of the other elements.
“Beyond that, I had to sell these ads, and they kind of come from an unconscious place in me, so it was yet another part of my brain. And then there’s another part, which is when I’m on the Rivermind drug. That’s me, but it’s the enhanced version of me in whatever direction the drug is pushing me. And then there was the reality of the technology taking its toll on me and making me feel fatigued and not connected with my life. Trying to find the connection between those four modes was really the challenge.”
Another was playing out her character’s angst against Rivermind’s gaslighting representative Gaynor, played by Tracee Ellis Ross, who attempts to upsell the Waterses at every turn. “She’s so charming,” Jones says of Ross, with whom she played sisters on ABC’s Black-ish. “Because she’s my friend, I do trust her as a person, so all of that, I felt, played really well in the show, because the more you trust her, the more it’s so evil because she’s so trustworthy.”
Near the end of the 57-minute episode, the timeline is forwarded by a year, and Mike is shown selling a crib he and Amanda bought years before to content creators who want to set it on fire for a social media video. Having struggled to conceive before Amanda’s tumor, the pair definitively give up on their dream of becoming parents after casually learning from Gaynor that “pregnancy costs extra.” It’s a similar challenge to the one Jones’ Allison Becker faced in season one of Apple TV+’s dystopian drama Silo.
“I think because I’m a woman of a certain age, I’m probably going to play those parts more, and it’s a very real thing,” says the 49-year-old. “I have a lot of friends who have gone through so much to get pregnant or have a baby or have a family. Women are having babies later now. That’s just a reality, which is so cool. I will say as an older mom, I feel so lucky that I could do what I wanted to do. Also, I had a whole life before [motherhood]. But when you’re pregnant, there’s a premium; there’s an upcharge, and it’s so maddening. There’s a price tag for motherhood.”
Deflated and unable to keep up with Rivermind’s extravagant costs, Amanda asks Mike to kill her. He tearfully obliges, smothering his wife in their bed as she begins running an ad for antidepressant lozenges.
“It sounds weird, but it’s sort of an optimistic ending in a way because she knows it’s the end and she’s in her most elevated state because she’s in Serenity mode and she really takes in the fact that her life is not livable anymore and feels good about that,” says Jones. “They’ve had a conversation where she said, ‘I want you to take care of it and do it when I’m running an ad because then I’m not conscious,’ so there are all these protections to make sure it’s done in a dignified way.
“I am somebody who believes you should have a say over how you die,” Jones adds. “It’s your last sense of agency in this world, and this is the most kind of peaceful version of that. I know it doesn’t feel peaceful because he’s onscreen smothering her, but she’s not there.”
Jones and co-star Chris O’Dowd.
Courtesy of Netflix
As Amanda lies lifeless on the bed, Mike then walks into the room where he once streamed himself self-harming for cash to keep his wife alive, box cutter in hand, presumably about to take his own life as he shuts the door behind him and the screen turns black. Though unsettling and far from a happy ending, Jones says of the episode, “Ultimately, it is kind of a love story.
“It’s these two people who loved each other so much and because of circumstance, they did everything they could to support each other and love each other and help each other live, even compromising their own well-being and their own dignity to the point where he couldn’t do it anymore and she couldn’t do it anymore and they couldn’t live without each other,” says Jones. “It’s sort of romantic in a way.”
The exploration of capitalism and corporate greed within the health care system, however, is a more frightening tale and a reality that in some ways is already upon us, Jones says.
“I think we’re there. Our brains aren’t on the cloud yet, but with Neuralink [Elon Musk’s tech company developing brain-computer interface] and all these things, that feels right around the corner,” says Jones. “I find myself repeating things that I know I’ve been sold — ‘Have you tried the whatever?’ I do that sometimes where I haven’t even tried the thing myself, but I’ve been served that ad enough times that I do become a kind of puppet for it.”
Jones feels we’ve arrived at the reality foreshadowed in “Nosedive” nine years ago as well, with actors’ social media followings now being considered in casting decisions and required for use in promotion.
“It’s weird. Now it’s in contracts. When you sign up to a project, you have to post on social media. I’ve had friends who didn’t have social media, who’ve had to sign up for it because they’re coming out in something,” says Jones. “I don’t mean to sound old school, but I am Gen X, and I do miss the days when there was a delineation between people’s personal lives and the silver screen. It was nice to just see people be brilliant and play characters, and you don’t have to know anything about their real lives. They’re just that talent that’s on the screen. Now there’s a lot of overlap and an appetite to know about people’s personal lives, and I, for one, don’t think that’s a prerequisite.”
Perhaps foreshadowing the future onscreen and off, Jones adds, “There’s a sort of lack of interest in privacy, and I think that’ll probably change again, and I’m sure Black Mirror will cover it. I think there will be a premium on privacy that people don’t have right now that they’re going to want and they’re going to have to pay to get, or they’re going to have to work hard to get. We don’t live in a private era at all.”
This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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