Rashida Jones has at all times been a vocal fan of Netflix’s dystopian anthology sequence “Black Mirror,” however she by no means anticipated it to safe her an Emmy nomination.
“I’m still pretty shocked,” Jones says of her lead actress in a restricted sequence or TV film nod for the Season 7 episode “Common People.” “I’ve never really been in the award conversation as an actress.”
Jones and I are talking on the cellphone on a Friday in late July throughout her journey to Japan. We focus on how in its seventh season, “Black Mirror” secured probably the most Emmy nominations within the sequence’ historical past.
“I just love this universe so much,” says Jones, who co-wrote the present’s Season 3 episode “Nosedive” after occurring a mission to fulfill creator Charlie Brooker. “There’s something dark and ominous and cautionary about the whole thing, but there’s so much humor in it. The greatest art does that, it reflects back to us where we are and isn’t afraid to make us laugh.”
“Common People” is a very bleak episode a few trainer named Amanda (Jones) whose husband, Mike (Chris O’Dowd), saves her from a coma by signing her up for a mind subscription service. Brooker co-wrote the episode with Bisha Ok. Ali, and it was directed by Ally Pankiw. The episode begins out as a love story however quickly morphs right into a parable about capitalism, company greed and healthcare: As soon as a persuasive Tracee Ellis Ross convinces O’Dowd’s character to avoid wasting his spouse for a number of hundred {dollars} a month, the couple is caught making an attempt to make monetary ends meet because the subscription service retains constructing extra premium ranges.
“The whole story is about a lack of agency, the intractable nature of capitalism and healthcare and the things you cannot control,” says Jones. “It’s survival. There are some ‘Black Mirror’ episodes where it’s like, ‘Oh, they missed that turn or made that decision.’ This was not that. This was intended to be two people who are victims of a system.”
“Capitalism is supposed to be this promise of, ‘If you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you too can have all of the money,’” Jones continues. “But the truth is, we just created a new class system. We obviously are having a giant wealth disparity problem, and the worst place we see it is in healthcare. It’s so criminal.”
On a Zoom name, Brooker tells me “Common People” began out as a lighter, extra comedic episode. He considered the concept whereas listening to a true-crime podcast when the host segued effortlessly from a ugly description of discovering a physique in a canal to speaking a few meals supply service.
“My one-line pitch to Netflix was, ‘It’s going to be a comedy story about this guy whose wife dies and he can get her back, but he has to get her back with ads,” says Brooker. “Originally they had kids and she’d start coming out with adverts while tucking them into bed.”
However when Brooker and Ali have been speaking about the place the story ends, they mentioned the implications of how providers should develop infinitely and trigger a degradation of every thing. “I thought, ‘Oh, there would be a point where your life almost wasn’t worth living,’ and the thought of euthanizing someone who’s spouting adverts at you was darkly comic, but tragic, obviously.”
Chris O’Dowd and Rashida Jones in “Common People.”
(Netflix)
Brooker stated he sees “Common People” as a companion piece to the second “Black Mirror” episode, “Fifteen Million Merits,” which he describes as a “nightmarish cartoon version of capitalism.” He needed to channel a way of individuals “feeling squeezed by everything,” however stated he wasn’t initially making an attempt to ship a message about healthcare, partially as a result of Brooker is British and doesn’t have the identical expertise as People.
“To use a phrase, it ‘hits different’ in the States, where it’s more overtly aligned with people’s experiences of how the healthcare industry works,” he says. “The fact that there’s a monetary value attached to our basic human survival feels ugly and unpleasant and inevitable.”
“We try to hit you in the gut,” he provides. “At a time when the world is getting more dystopian, I’m delighted that people will still turn up and watch us.”
Jones and I’ve an identical dialog, and she or he brings up how Brooker at all times says the sequence isn’t the long run. It’s an alternate model of now.
“We have all of these tiny things that make our life more efficient, and we don’t read the fine print,” says Jones. “They’re collecting our data and reading our faces, and we are fully being used for tech to win. The truth is we’re slowly chipping away at our privacy and agency.”
I ask Jones about her relationship with know-how and she or he laughs. “I do really like TikTok, and I know exactly what it’s doing, how it’s gathering data on me, how it’s keeping me there, and I still do it because I’m fallible that way.
“I can convince myself like — look how much I’ve learned about gut health! And the galaxy! Then every month I’ll take it off my phone. It’s an extremely sharp, thoughtful industry that is designed to capture me, and I’m absolutely not above that.”
To unwind, Jones goes again to the fundamentals — spending time together with her child, for example, or dancing. Jones, who has misplaced each dad and mom within the final six years, says she’s additionally been studying books about Celtic mysticism, sorrow and connecting to nature.
“It makes me feel like it’s just all part of a bigger process,” says Jones. “The kids say you gotta touch grass and that’s a real thing. I just came from the forest in Japan, and I’m in awe, like, ‘What are the birds doing? What is the little bug doing on the grass?’ It’s something that was here before us and will be here when we go away.”
