Six of Black Mirror’s Best: Toby Haynes
Black Mirror director Toby Haynes reveals his top picks from Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology series, including a pair of his own entries, and explains how they were brought to the screen.
When Toby Haynes first signed on to direct an episode of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian anthology series Black Mirror, he admits it was an “incredibly daunting” prospect to follow in the footsteps of other filmmakers including Joe Wright, Otto Bathurst and Jodie Foster.
But after taking the reins for one of the show’s standout episodes, season four opener USS Callister, he has since returned to the series three more times for S6’s horror-themed Demon 79 and S7 entries Bête Noire and USS Callister: Into Infinity, Black Mirror’s sole sequel episode to date.
Here, Haynes reveals his six favourite episodes (plus a few honourable mentions) and takes DQ inside some of the creative decision-making on Demon 79 and Bête Noire.
The Entire History of You (S1.E3)
In a future world where people can record everything they see and hear, Liam (Toby Kebbell) becomes suspicious of his wife (Jodie Whittaker)’s relationship with her friend Jonas (Tom Cullen), leading him to scrutinise his memories.
It was the first episode I watched. I loved the way it was conceived, I loved the choices they’d made. The feeling that it was only a few minutes into the future was really interesting, but it was such a brilliant story, and feels very Charlie even though it was written by Jesse [Armstrong]. It has that Charlie way of putting people at odds with each other and creating a situation that is deeply uncomfortable.
That was the first one I saw and it was such a thrill to see a show that was this grown-up and intelligent but in the science-fiction arena. My first love of TV was through Doctor Who and Star Wars, so sci-fi was in my blood, and here I was working with Charlie Brooker, who I was aware of very early on, particularly with [zombie satire] Dead Set, which was just the most remarkable series. Suddenly I was working with him on this show. It was extremely daunting. Watching that was really exciting.
San Junipero (S3.E4)
When introverted Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) and outgoing Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) visit the titular beach town, their lives are changed forever.
I was aware of Owen [Harris, director]’s work through Misfits, which was another show I really loved. He has such an aesthetic and a way of looking at things, and there’s such a polish to his work as well. The intimidation, stress and anxiety levels were going through the roof for me, looking at this incredible piece of work that is so soulful and so beautiful but incredibly considered.
Every shot had a reason to be, and it felt like a level of execution I hadn’t managed to achieve at that point in my career. I’m much more of an instinctive director, working in the moment with my actors and where I want to put the camera, and less contrived, but what Owen manages to do is make it feel very natural, with perfect choices that were clearly made a long time before he stepped on set. It was a thrill to watch – and had great music choices.
White Bear (S2.E2)
Victoria (Lenora Crichlow) wakes up and cannot remember who she is or where she is. Everyone she encounters refuses to communicate with her, and they all seem to know something she doesn’t – but what?
I remember speaking to the production designer, Joel Collins, who told me White Bear was what you call a ‘bottle episode’ in the sense that they had, to some extent, run out of money that season. Joel said to Charlie, ‘Look, we’ve got this location we can pull out, we could do this on the budget we’ve got, this is what we could achieve.’ And Charlie went away and apparently turned the script around in a week – and that was White Bear.
One of the great things about Charlie and the creative process is that when you’re under pressure, you come up with great solutions and you go to places you didn’t expect. So, under pressure, Charlie had come up with this incredible, intense episode with a twist that is absolutely mind-blowing.
This was starting to give me more confidence [to make USS Callister] because looking at White Bear, you’re like, ‘Well it doesn’t have to be this highly orchestrated filmmaking,’ which you get in San Junipero. It was much more of an energy-based episode and kind of scrappier. That did feel a bit more my wheelhouse. But just as a viewer, it’s so riveting. I’d worked with Lenora on Being Human, so it was really cool to see her in action. It was such a gut punch, that reveal at the end.
The National Anthem (S1.E1)
Prime minister Michael Callow (Rory Kinnear) faces a shocking dilemma when Princess Susannah (Lydia Wilson), a much-loved member of the royal family, is kidnapped.
The first one – what an incredible film that was. I hadn’t worked with Rory Kinnear at that point. I worked with him later on Brexit, the film I did after my first Black Mirror. But I was such a huge fan of his, and to see him being faced with such an impossible, hilariously disgusting and yet strangely plausible situation was just a delight.
What was really interesting about it was there’s no technology really in The National Anthem. Charlie gets a bit of stick these days if he does an episode without technology, Demon 79 being one of them, yet the show began with an episode [like that]. It’s always good to remember that [Black Mirror episodes] are all horrors. The National Anthem is such a profound horror story for a politician to go through, and it’s dark humour throughout. The sheer joy at the mischievousness of it was brilliant.
Demon 79 (S6.E5)
Northern England, 1979. A meek sales assistant (Anjana Vasan) is told she must commit terrible acts to prevent the apocalypse when she is visited by the mysterious Gaap (Paapa Essiedu).
It’s such an incredible script written by Charlie and Bisha [K Ali] – I could really feel the influence of Bisha. She’s an incredible writer and a wonderful person to work with. When we got into the shoot of Demon, the character of Gaap wasn’t meant to be the Gaap you see on screen. He was supposed to be a punk rocker, not unlike Viv from The Young Ones. But when I started to think about it, this manifestation of Gaap was not fitting the direction we were going in.
For a start, it was very hard to find someone who could inhabit a kind of punk rocker attitude. But I remember Paapa’s tape coming in and he didn’t play the punk rocker. He played the naive kid in his father’s business trying to do a job that he’s not very well suited to. The punk aesthetic just didn’t suit Paapa, it’s not his energy. Bisha was looking at bands from the era and she went, ‘Boney M!’ We looked at Boney M and we all just went, ‘That’s Gaap.’
The reason I’m putting it on the list is because I have such an affinity for that film, for the way we made it. When I sat down in the edit and saw it, I thought, ‘This is the closest thing to perfection that I’ve managed to achieve.’ It’s not the film I read when I first read the script, but in terms of how we shifted and moulded it through the process of what we were given and the inspiration we had, Paapa and what he brought to it, Anjana and what she brought to it, and the design aspect… it was just such a great experience.
Demon has a special place in my heart. I can’t really watch my work very often without cringing. But Demon, it’s not my work. It’s the sum of so many great and talented people that I could just take great pleasure in watching it and seeing it come to fruition.
Bête Noire (S7.E2)
Confectionary whizz kid Maria (Siena Kelly) is unnerved when her former schoolmate Verity (Rose McEwen) joins the company she works at – because there’s something altogether odd about Verity, something only Maria seems to notice.
I call it a sleeper hit. It was a sleeper film to make as well, because it felt like a very slight story to me on the page. I was like, ‘I’m not sure what Charlie’s going for here.’ I knew he was trying to go for gaslighting, but what was good about it was that for all of its lightness, it was all about performance and it was all about actors. There weren’t a lot of pyrotechnic sequences for me to get my teeth into in terms of set pieces. There are no car chases, no space battle. It was very much actors in rooms acting.
[Casting director] Jina Jay smashed it out of the park. Siena, what an incredible, soulful actor she is. She brings absolute heart and humanity to that role. I just loved working with her. She’s such an instinctive actor, I really felt like she has to feel the situation to know how she’s gonna pitch it. She doesn’t come in fully loaded. She really finds it in the moment, and it was just great. The way she played Maria, I felt like I knew that person. I understood her, and she was really playing with the idea of what Maria remembers about Rosy’s character, Verity. We were playing with the idea of knowing you did something wrong to this person but it feels so alien to who you are now that you don’t want to acknowledge it and you are in denial about it. She really captured that brilliantly and you can see how she plays it.
Rosy was an absolute revelation. In some ways, she’s also instinctive but she does come fully loaded. She is a very cerebral actress. I remember seeing her in the castings and thinking she was going to be really special. In a funny way, I had to fight for the casting on that. I remember having to do a bit of a pitch for Siena and Rosy, and we got them in for a chemistry test. Then after Charlie and Jessica [Rhoades, executive producer] saw that tape, Jessica said to me, ‘It’s such a pleasure when a director fights for his vision, because seeing that has made me see the episode in a new light.’ That was a really lovely thing for her to say.
We did the shoot in about 16 days. I had a plan in my head about how to approach the visual of it, because I really wanted to make it feel real. I thought the episode relied on the fact that it had to feel like a real situation, something you absolutely recognise, and so I wanted to shoot it very observationally at first with the cameras, and slowly bring the cameras in closer and closer to Maria as she’s getting slowly cornered by Verity’s trap.
Then you get to that last scene, and that shot where one tear comes out of Rosy’s eye – she did that in the first take. It was just incredible. Siena met that moment with emotion, totally breaking down. You’re watching someone have an absolute mental breakdown in front of you, it’s incredible. I just fizz with excitement when I’m filming this stuff.
Again, it’s credit to Charlie’s writing that here is a scene where you’ve been following the victim all the way through this and then he flips everything. Verity’s not the bully, she’s the victim. Maria’s the bully, she fucking did it. And then he flips it again. We then go into a little fight, and I wanted a fight that just feels real. We’ve gone from the memory of being bullied in the playground to having a playground scrap. They’re pulling each other’s hair and then they do a lovely slappy fight because neither of them know how to fight. It’s not a long fight but it is a really impactful fight. I’m really proud of that and how we pulled that off. You’ve gone from the high melodrama of these revelations, you’ve shifted allegiances from who’s the victim and who’s a bully, and then you’re into this action fight that is just so visceral and painful and each impact hurts.
Ultimately, I don’t think I saw it on the page when I first read it, but I’m now so aware of the mischievousness of what Charlie did trying to gaslight the nation. You can’t trust what you’ve seen – there are two versions of that film. There is no one version of reality in that film. That’s all I’m gonna say, and that is the genius of Charlie Brooker.
Honourable mentions
Playtest (S3.E2) was great. Dan Trachtenberg directed Playtest and that was another one that had this incredibly considered way of filmmaking. It just seemed perfectly shot and perfectly realised. It seemed brilliantly cinematic.
I remember watching Hated in the Nation (S3.E6). That’s really good, with great performances.
Metalhead (S4.E5) – thank goodness I saw Metalhead after I’d made USS Callister. It’s just a brilliantly envisaged film on so many levels. Direction, performance, and not least the design of that robot dog. I saw a model of it that Joel [Collins] had made, and it was just an incredibly well-realised piece of tech. It really felt real. It was a real thrill to watch that one.
Striking Vipers (S5.E1) is such a great episode. I remember catching up with that when I started doing Demon 79. Again, Owen Harris is absolutely knocking it out the park. It felt like a really sophisticated piece of drama.
RELATED CONTENT
Cracking Black Mirror
As Black Mirror returns, creator Charlie Brooker and exec producer Jessica Rhoades reveal the creative process behind Netflix’s mind-bending anthology while stars Emma Corrin, Sienna Kelly, Rosy McEwen, Lewis Gribben and Josh Finan offer insights into their unsettling and thought-provoking episodes.
Raising hell
How did the most “gloriously odd” Black Mirror episode ever win a Bafta award? Series creator Charlie Brooker and writing partner Bisha K Ali break down season six episode Demon 79 and talk about upending fan expectations and the dangers of working with AI.
Getting darker
Series creator Charlie Brooker joins stars Paapa Essiedu and Anjana Vasan to take DQ inside Demon 79, a horror-focused episode from the new season of Black Mirror that stands apart from the rest for one reason – it’s got nothing to do with technology.
tagged in: Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker, Netflix, Toby Haynes