‘Black Mirror’ scared Annie Murphy. But she said yes when Charlie Brooker came calling

Spoiler alert: This story contains spoilers for the first episode of Season 6 of “Black Mirror.”

It was a relief to Annie Murphy, the Canadian actor known for “Schitt’s Creek” and “Kevin Can F**k Himself,” that the episode of “Black Mirror” in which she appears was a rare comedic venture for the anthology series.

“I was so actually relieved because I’m a big baby oftentimes when it comes to scary things,” Murphy said in a Zoom interview. “And many of Charlie’s episodes have filled me with a deep existential dread at 3:30 in the morning when I’m trying to sleep.”

She was talking about Charlie Brooker, the British mastermind behind the show that has made nightmares out of the intersection of humans and technology.

It’s not that there isn’t a horror element in “Joan Is Awful,” which kicked off “Black Mirror’s” sixth season on Netflix this week. At least, I suspect most people would find having their day-to-day lives turned into a warts-and-all TV series horrific. But the episode becomes comedic when Murphy’s character, Joan, decides to fight back against Streamberry, the Netflix-like service that is exploiting her reality for viewer engagement.

Mind you, Murphy would have said yes to Brooker even if her episode had been terrifying.

“His brain is so wild and intelligent and convoluted and dark and mysterious, and he’s telling stories that are kind of cautionary tales, which I very much appreciate,” Murphy said. “So to get a phone call telling me that — it wasn’t even an audition. It was an offer from Charlie Brooker to be in an episode of ‘Black Mirror.’ I didn’t even ask what the role was. I didn’t ask what the plot was. I said a loud and desperate yes.”

For his part, Brooker says “Joan Is Awful” is the series’ first “out-and-out comic episode.”

But, in production notes provided by Netflix, he also called it “in some way a traditional ‘Black Mirror’ story in that it has a near-future setting, high-tech gizmos and an existential nightmare.”

The nightmare begins for Joan when she settles down to watch TV with her “vanilla” boyfriend (Avi Nash) after a stressful day at her soulless job and sees that day reflected back at her in a show called “Joan Is Awful.” But the Joan on TV, played by Salma Hayek, is a meaner version of the real thing and it seems that nothing Joan does in her actual life is off limits.

How is that possible? The answer to that is part of a list of spoilers that Netflix would rather not have revealed, but artificial intelligence plays a role.

Thanks to the Streamberry show, which millions of people are watching, Joan’s life implodes. She tries to take legal action, only to learn she signed away the rights to her image in the Streamberry terms and conditions that she didn’t read before clicking yes.

Joan then tries to enlist Hayek in her fight against Streamberry by doing something so disgusting that Hayek will no longer want to play Joan. I don’t want to get too spoilery, but it involves hamburgers, laxative, a cheerleader’s uniform and public defecation.

Murphy joked that when she read that part of the script, “I was like, ‘Yes, this is my perfect dream job!’ But Salma, on the other hand, did not have that reaction. She needed a little bit (of) convincing because she is a classier lady than I am. But we got there.”

Indeed, in the production notes, Hayek refers to a shocking moment “that I had to come to terms with and made me ask myself ‘Do I really want to do this? Am I going to get in trouble?’ Ultimately, there is too much talent involved in the project to miss out on such a golden opportunity.”

The onscreen talent includes Rob Delaney (“Catastrophe”), Himesh Patel (“Station Eleven”), Wunmi Mosaku (“Lovecraft Country”) and Lolly Adefope (the U.K. “Ghosts”), as well as Murphy’s fellow Canadians Kayla Lorette and Michael Cera.

There was also a Canadian directing the episode, Ally Pankiw, who was a writer on “Schitt’s Creek” (which gets a shout-out in the episode, incidentally, as a “great show”).

Pankiw appreciated the fact that the comedy in “Joan Is Awful” has depth, she said in the production notes.

“I think the episode says a lot about the true horror women feel when their image is consumed by other people or society, especially when that control is taken away … It’s not heavy-handed, though, because it’s also about poop jokes and female friendship.”

Speaking of friendship, Murphy and Hayek hit it off on set, defecation scenes notwithstanding.

Despite her initial terror of working with the Oscar-nominated actor, Hayek blew Murphy’s “preconceived notions of who Salma Hayek was going to be … out of the water and exceeded every expectation that I had. And she’s so smart and so observant and so funny. But my favourite thing is that she was so willing to make fun of herself and be goofy, and try things out and have them fail. And I learned so much from working with her and we got to be buds, which is another mind-blowing thing to say out loud. But we made each other cackle every day and it was so much fun.”

Remember how Murphy talked about “Black Mirror” episodes being cautionary tales?

In this instance, she sees the lesson in the growing prevalence of AI. “I hope that this episode will spark some conversation and have people ask some questions, because I feel like there are so many unanswered questions about the very severe repercussions it could have on our world,” she said.

It’s an especially timely topic given the Hollywood writers’ strike, “where the writers are literally asking that their jobs not be taken by machines. And it’s so kind of mind-bending to realize that we’re living in a world where that is a genuine concern, that computers are on the verge of wiping out thousands, hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

And if the computers come for actors’ jobs? “I feel like I can always work at a bar,” Murphy said. “I just want the world to continue existing in a way that’s not absolutely terrifying.”

Debra Yeo is an editor and a writer for the Star’s Culture section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo

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