Annie Murphy and Salma Hayek became ‘buds’ on ‘Black Mirror’

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 “Black Mirror” episode in which she appears was a rare comedic venture for the anthology series.

“I was actually so relieved because I’m often a big baby 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 who has created nightmares at the intersection of humans and technology.

It’s not like there’s no horror element to “Joan Is Awful,” which kicked off the sixth season of “Black Mirror” on Netflix this week. At least, I suspect most people would hate it if their everyday life turned into a warts-and-everything TV series. But the episode turns comical when Murphy’s character, Joan, decides to fight back against Streamberry, the Netflix-esque service that exploits 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 intricate and dark and mysterious, and he tells stories that are kind of cautionary tales, which I really appreciate,” Murphy said. So to get a call telling me that — it wasn’t even an audition. It was an offer from Charlie Brooker to star 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 comedy episode.”

But in Netflix’s production notes, he also called it “somehow a traditional ‘Black Mirror’ story in that it has a near future, high-tech gadgetry, and an existential nightmare.”

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

How is that possible? The answer to that is in a list of spoilers that Netflix prefers not to reveal, but artificial intelligence plays a role.

Thanks to the Streamberry show, which millions of people watch, Joan’s life implodes. She tries to take legal action, only to find that she signed the rights to her image in Streamberry’s terms and conditions that she hadn’t read before clicking Yes.

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

Murphy joked that when she read that part of the script, “I thought, ‘Yeah, this is my perfect dream job!’ But Salma, on the other hand, didn’t have that reaction. She needed a little bit of convincing because she’s a classier lady than I am. But we got there.”

Indeed, in the production notes, Hayek references a shocking moment “that had me come to terms with and made me wonder: Do I really want to do this? Will I get in trouble?’ Ultimately, there is too much talent involved in the project to miss such a golden opportunity.”

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

There was also a Canadian who directed the episode, Ally Pankiw, who was a writer for “Schitt’s Creek” (which incidentally is praised in the episode as a “great show”).

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

“I think the episode says a lot about the real 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, as it’s also about poop jokes and female friendship. ”

Speaking of friendship, Murphy and Hayek hit it off on set, despite poop scenes.

Despite her initial fear of working with the Oscar-nominated actor, Hayek blew Murphy’s “preconceptions about who Salma Hayek would become… out of the water and exceeded any expectations I had. And she’s so smart and so perceptive and so funny. But my favorite thing is that she was so willing to fool herself and be goofy, and try things and have them fail. And I learned so much working with her and we became buds, which is also great to say out loud. But we let each other cluck every day and it was so much fun.”

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

In this case, she sees the lesson in the growing prevalence of AI. “I hope this episode will start a conversation and ask people questions because I feel like there are so many unanswered questions about the very dire consequences it could have on our world,” she said.

It’s a particularly hot topic given the writers’ strike in Hollywood, “where the writers are literally asking that their jobs not be taken by machines. And it’s so mind-blowing to realize that we live in a world where that’s a genuine concern, that computers are on the verge of wiping out thousands, hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

And if the computers come for acting? “I feel like I could always work in a bar,” Murphy said. “I just want the world to continue to exist in a way that isn’t absolutely terrifying.”

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

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