For Jimmi Simpson, getting cast on Black Mirror back in Season 4 was a dream come true. The character actor who’s won critics’ praise on everything from the madcap sitcom It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia to the sci-fi Western WestWorld to David Fincher’s masterful true crime thriller Zodiac was a big fan of Charlie Brooker’s anthology series.
“When I first was invited to come for [‘USS Callister’], it was my favorite show,” Simpson said of Black Mirror in a Zoom interview with Mashable ahead of the Season 7 debut. “I couldn’t believe it. And I had the exact same feeling [coming back for ‘USS Callister: Into Infinity’].”
Simpson was awed by the storytelling Brooker displayed within Black Mirror. “It’s reminiscent to me of my early loves of Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, and Rod Serling [The Twilight Zone]. When I saw those first two seasons, [Brooker] was predicting a very simple but truthful future that seems kind of inevitable. And they’re always based in these human issues like fear, loneliness, need for connection.”
These themes reverberate in Simpson’s two favorite Black Mirror episodes, “Be Right Back” and “The Entire History of You,” both of which involve in one way or another the loss of a romantic partner — one through death, the other through a brutal breakup. “It was shocking,” he said of the impact of those Season 1 episodes. “It was like that shock of recognition that’s so rare from current literature. I will say that was so raw, those episodes, so honest.”
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.
