Editor’s note: The below interview contains spoilers for Black Mirror Season 7.
While many viewers might normally associate Charlie Brooker’s Netflix sci-fi anthology Black Mirror with a lot of doom and gloom and cynicism about technology, the creator has also delivered many more optimistic stories in the years since the show first premiered. There are certainly episodes like “The National Anthem” and “Shut Up and Dance,” but there are also episodes like “San Junipero” and “Hang the DJ,” which end on slightly more optimistic — albeit equally bittersweet — notes. With the premiere of Season 7, now streaming on Netflix, Brooker has debuted a few more episodes in a similar vein, including “Hotel Reverie,” starring Emma Corrin and Issa Rae as a pair of star-crossed lovers who cross paths in one of the most unlikely places: an AI reimagining of a classic Hollywood movie.
Ahead of the premiere of Black Mirror Season 7, Collider had the opportunity to speak with several cast and creatives about the sci-fi anthology’s return, including Emma Corrin. Over the course of the interview, which you can read below, Corrin discusses their interest in signing on for “Hotel Reverie” and how elements like mastering the Transatlantic accent, as well as costume and set design, helped them define the character of Clara/Dorothy Chambers. They also discuss the process of building their on-screen chemistry with Issa Rae, their thoughts on the episode’s ending, and more.
COLLIDER: Congratulations on the episode. It is such a beautiful, bittersweet love story and period drama and sci-fi piece all wrapped up into one. When you have the opportunity to be in an episode of Black Mirror, do you even have to know what it’s about, or do you just have to hear Black Mirror and go, “I’m in”?
EMMA CORRIN: Yeah, as it goes, it’s just one you say yes to, blind, for sure. But I did get the script when I got the offer, and I was blown away by it. I think Charlie [Brooker] is an absolute genius.
I was thinking about another project that you’ve been involved in recently, A Murder at the End of the World, which is another fantastic show and tackles the issue of AI in a really interesting way. Was that something that really crossed your mind when you were looking at this role, that similar throughline?
CORRIN: It wasn’t, really, because I feel like Black Mirror as a whole makes you think about AI. But this episode in particular, I didn’t really feel like it made me think about AI in a certain way. They use it to platform a love story and center this love story and explore human connection, but I don’t actually think it makes any profound stance on AI. In a purposeful way, Charlie’s left it ambivalent, which I think is really interesting.
Emma Corrin Enjoyed Finding Dorothy’s Transatlantic Accent for “Hotel Reverie”

Image via Netflix

Throughout your career, you’ve done different accent work, but “Hotel Reverie” is very much evocative of that particular era of Hollywood and the type of accent that was more prevalent at the time. Did you do anything to help yourself hone in on that Transatlantic accent?
CORRIN: I love that accent so much. It’s one of my favorite ones, and I think it’s such a wild thing that we’ve lost that. I’d love to look into why and how that happens. A whole part of speech and language has changed, which is fascinating. I worked with William Conacher, who I’ve worked with many, many times on things. He’s just a brilliant dialect coach and helped me get to grips with it. Actually, I was always doing the Transatlantic accent at, like, a 10, and I kept being told to bring it down to a four. That Transatlantic accent was mainly an American thing, although it leans quite British. But I think British actresses at the time weren’t doing it as much, and they wanted Dorothy to very much be a British actress.
Once you have the voice, does it feel like a lot of the other details really click into place, or is there something else that you try to hone in on first when you’re finding who this character is?
CORRIN: The voice is definitely part of it, especially in this case. Also, I work with Polly Bennett, who I’ve worked with many times before. She’s just a wonderful, magical person on movement and character stuff. A lot of the physicality is so, so different in actors of that era and the way they held themselves. They gestured quite evocatively, very specifically, and a lot of their facial expressions were either very restrained or very larger than life. A lot of the emotion was very heightened. The way they held themselves entering a room with such poise, all of that I wanted to get down completely.
A lot of “Hotel Reverie” is rooted in the immersion of this film set. When you’re on a set that’s been designed to look like something out of an old Hollywood film, and you’re shooting in black and white, what does that do to really help you develop the character?
CORRIN: It just all adds to it. It really does. It’s all additive. We were on this incredible, built set with these amazing black and white hand-painted backdrops, which are just beautiful backdrops for Cairo. The costumes and her makeup, as well. When all of these things were in place, it’s just beautiful. You can really get lost in it.
Emma Corrin Found Inspiration for Their “Hotel Reverie” Character From Old Hollywood Bloopers

Image via Netflix

This episode really does have the distinction of feeling like a period drama and a science fiction story, especially as your character starts to develop more agency and has more of a true understanding of her existence. How did you look for ways to differentiate the Clara that we meet at the top of this episode, before that revelation, and then the one that emerges after?
CORRIN: I think you’re right in saying it’s about agency. It’s almost like taking someone who’s been asleep and then waking them up. Polly Bennett actually found this amazing series of clips on YouTube that someone’s edited together, and it’s all 1940s film bloopers. You can see these actors who are speaking in the way you were saying, that Transatlantic accent, all very poised in these intense scenes, and then they’d say something and break. And when they’d break out of it, they’re so far from that style that we associate with these films. I just thought that those actors were also quite like that in real life, that they were heightened and speaking with that voice and very poised and put together, and it was just completely opposite. Suddenly, these real chinks of humanity shine through. It was absolutely incredible to watch, and I think that really helped me to think about the performance that Dorothy’s giving and then who she is, actually, in real life, and that switch.
I love that the episode pays tribute to those bloopers with the audition scene.
CORRIN: Exactly. That was, I think, why Polly found it in the first place, and then I ended up using it quite a lot, actually.
We learn in the episode that the AI was pulled from the real Dorothy, what happened in her life, and then when Clara/Dorothy breaks through the boundary of the illusion, she’s confronted by the real story. Did you film the flashback scenes first? Did those come later after filming the Hotel Reverie scenes? Were they all jumbled in together?
CORRIN: They were all jumbled in together. But by the time I did the void, where I’m standing in the void, I think I’d shot all of the bits I was remembering.
Emma Corrin Played Improv Games With Issa Rae To Find Their “Hotel Reverie” Chemistry

Image via Netflix

The premise partly revolves around these two very unlikely people finding romance in maybe one of the last places you’d ever expect, but that’s what makes it so quintessentially Black Mirror. I don’t think we can talk about this episode without talking about your chemistry with Issa Rae, and I wanted to ask about your favorite part of working with her, and developing that relationship as we see it evolve from the initial script that they’re meant to follow into something that’s distinctly unscripted.
CORRIN: We had the best time. We were really lucky because they gave us a week of rehearsal, and we worked with Haolu [Wang], the director, very closely just in this room, and we just played, really, for a week. We talked a lot about everything, really — what the episode made us think, what we felt about the characters. As you say, it’s such a unique and complex set of circumstances that our characters are in.
And then we did a lot of really fun improv games. I remember there was one where Haolu said, “Emma, I want you to imagine that you’re in a room with four walls, and one tiny window, and you’ve never been anywhere else. The only reality you’ve ever known is inside that room. Issa, you’re on the outside of that room, and you have to persuade Emma to leave. Emma doesn’t know any existence outside of that, so you just have to try and persuade them that there is a better life outside. You’ve got to do that well enough that they get out of that.” That was so fantastic and really funny. When you’ve done a week of that kind of interaction and games, and spending time with each other, it just makes the whole process so much easier because there’s a real bond that’s been established.

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There’s also a bit of tragedy even before the end, when the movie resets and the characters have to go back to a point where none of what played out actually transpired, at least in memory. Do you feel that there is a part of Clara/Dorothy that, deep down, still has a sense of what happened?
CORRIN: You’re the second person to bring it up, and I remember having this epiphany when I ran over to Haolu and was like, “I think that she does remember.” Because I think Clara/Dorothy is super smart, and I think that she knows that the only way Brandy gets out of this alive is if she plays the game, if she finishes and gets Brandy out, and she knows that Brandy really needs to go back. So, I think she remembers, and she actually plays it so that she saves Brandy’s life. I’ve never talked to Charlie about it because it was something that I could just have fun playing myself. I think if you bear that in mind, a lot of the last few looks and lines in that rooftop scene have an added little something, but it doesn’t change anything fundamental. I don’t think I spoke to Charlie about it. I wonder what he’d say. But I think it’s nice. You could read it that way.
As someone who used to play the piano, I always have a bit of personal fondness for “Clair de Lune.” Was that really you playing in the episode?
CORRIN: That was really me playing, at least at the beginning. When it goes into the really complex bit, it was not me. But I did. I learned for it, and I was quite adamant. I was like, “I’ve spent time learning. I’d really like to try and use it. I mean, if it’s utter shit, don’t.” [Laughs] But I was like, “Please try.” So, yeah, it is me.
In terms of the ending, in a way, it is romantic. It’s bittersweet, but also kind of hopeful. What were your thoughts when you read it in the script and saw that this was how everything was going to wrap up?
CORRIN: Exactly as you said, I was happy for them, but also, it is ultimately really sad. Dorothy, at least, the only existence that version of her knows is this audition room. And again, it’s this strange limbo space, and yet it works for them. There is a part of both of them that will get a real, genuine connection and joy from that. So, I guess there’s this message that you can find connection, and it can transcend anything sometimes.
Black Mirror Season 7 is now available to stream on Netflix.

Black Mirror

Release Date

December 4, 2011

Network

Channel 4, Netflix

Directors

Owen Harris, Toby Haynes, James Hawes, David Slade, Carl Tibbetts, Ally Pankiw, Bryn Higgins, Dan Trachtenberg, Euros Lyn, Jodie Foster, Joe Wright, John Hillcoat, Sam Miller, Tim Van Patten, Uta Briesewitz, Colm McCarthy, Jakob Verbruggen, James Watkins, John Crowley, Otto Bathurst, Anne Sewitsky, Brian Welsh

Writers

Jesse Armstrong