Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Season 6 of Black Mirror.Netflix's newest batch of Black Mirror has treated us to five new stories of technology-based thrills — and series creator Charlie Brooker is discussing how the first episode of this new season came to be.
"Joan is Awful" stars Schitt's Creek actress Annie Murphy as Joan, a tech CEO. A day in the life shows Joan having to awkwardly fire an employee (played by The Bear's Ayo Edebiri), speaking with her therapist about her fiancé Krish's (Ani Nash) bland cooking, and kissing her ex Mac (Rob Delaney) in a moment of weakness. At the end of her day, she sits down to watch Streamberry, a Netflix stand-in, only to find them promoting a new show called Joan is Awful. Curious, she and Krish watch the first episode which turns out to be a dramatization of her day, with Joan played by Salma Hayek. At the end of the episode, Hayek's "Joan" turns on Streamberry to find Cate Blanchett in the role, and the Russian Doll goes on forever.
The horrible light in which she's portrayed immediately costs Joan her job and her relationship. After speaking with her lawyer about the intrusive series, Joan is told that she signed away her rights when she agreed to Streamberry's terms and conditions. The show is made using A.I. imagery and Deepfake technology, using information from her phone's microphone. That means Salma Hayek herself is not involved in the production, having simply allowed Streamberry to use her likeness. In an attempt to push Hayek to bring an end to the show, Joan defecates in a church, which is of course later shown as Salma Hayek doing so on the next episode of Joan is Awful. This upsets actress Salma Hayek, who joins forces with Joan to take down the company's quantum computer that creates the content.
The Idea for "Joan Is Awful" Came to Charlie Brooker While Watching 'The Dropout'
When asked about his ideas, writer Charlie Brooker told Metro that "Sometimes there's half an idea," citing "Joan is Awful" as an example in which the title had stuck in his head early on. "An average woman finds herself on the front page of the newspaper. She's the lead item on the news, not because she's involved in a terrible scandal, or she's done something heroic, but just, she's 'main character of the day'." He knew early on that the idea would be more effective if it preyed on Joan's insecurities rather than any major life events, but was yet to conceive of a story to carry the idea. "I don't know what the story is, but it's a funny situation. Then there was another idea which was [...] to do with Deepfake A.I.-generated imagery being streamed by a news network." But how did these two ideas come to be one? Brooker recalled telling himself, "You've got an idea, but you don't have a story," and this story didn't come to him until he happened to be watching the Hulu series The Dropout.
The Dropout stars Oscar-nominee Amanda Seyfried as the real-life CEO of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes. The real Holmes, on whom the series is based, founded Theranos in 2003 at age 19 and saw its valuation skyrocket to $9 billion after claims that Theranos had revolutionized blood testing by only needing a small fingerprick sample. By 2015, Holmes was the youngest and richest self-made female in the USA according to Forbes, which quickly updated its statement the following year, estimating her net worth to be zero. This was a result of journalistic investigations that revealed that Holmes' company had fraudulently misled investors into raising $700 million to fund technology that was not actually capable of Holmes' exaggerated claims. The SEC charged Holmes and COO Ramesh Balwani (played in The Dropout by Naveen Andrews) in 2018, and the two were indicted on fraud by a federal grand jury.
This Real-Life Story Was News, Then a Podcast, and Then a Star-Studded Drama
Holmes settled the SEC charges by returning almost 19 million shares to the company, paying a fine of $500,000, and being banned from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years. Between January 23 and February 27, 2019, ABC Podcasts released The Dropout, a true-crime podcast dubbed "an unbelievable tale of ambition and fame gone terribly wrong." Produced by Taylor Dunn, Victoria Thompson, and Rebecca Jarvis, its sixth and final episode was titled "What Now?" with much of Holmes' repercussions yet to be decided. Following the podcast's success, 20/20 premiered a two-hour follow-up in March 2019, which was nominated for a News Emmy Award.
In 2021, Deadline reported that Hulu had ordered a six-to-ten-episode limited series adaptation of The Dropout starring SNL's Kate McKinnon as Elizabeth Holmes, with the podcast's producers serving as executive producers on the show. McKinnon later pulled out, being replaced by Seyfried, with Elizabeth Meriwether as showrunner and Michael Showalter directing four of the eight episodes. Seyfried later won an Emmy for her role. The series also stars William H. Macy, Elizabeth Marvel, Laurie Metcalf, Stephen Fry, and Alan Ruck. The real-life "U.S. v. Holmes, et al." trial continued until January 2022, when Holmes was convicted of defrauding investors. Beginning in May 2023, Holmes was sentenced to serve more than 11 years in prison and was fined $452 million along with Balwani, to be paid to their fraud victims.
This Fictional Dramatization of Elizabeth Holmes' Life Inspired Brooker to Write "Joan Is Awful"
As Brooker told Metro, "I was watching The Dropout which was [...] the dramatization of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos story. And I was watching that with my wife, and we were sort of commenting on, like, 'God, this feels like it happened yesterday and here it is, already a drama on TV!'" He also explained to NME that this specific dramatization inspired him to change his newspaper idea into a fictionalized adaptation in order to combine it with his other ideas. “I was watching the show and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s dramatizing stuff. That’s a better sort of story. And then you can get into the Deepfake A.I. stuff.” After watching The Dropout, Brooker recalls everything coming together. "Then, these two half-ideas you've had suddenly go and get sucked up into this one. [...] So, sometimes, rather than leaving an idea behind, it's like a little bit of a melody or something that's still, like, playing on a loop somewhere in the back of your head, and you find the place for it."
What the idea of dramatization gave Brooker that the newspaper idea didn't is the notion that this unsuspecting Joan was not only being scrutinized for her own actions but rather that her actions were being exaggerated. The experience of being played by a famous Hollywood actor is one very few can relate to and likely resembles an out-of-body sensation. Brooker found it important that Joan's surprise be doubled by the fact that Salma Hayek was in the role. "It was ‘Hollywood A-Lister’ [in the script]," he told NME. Between the news, the podcast, and the TV dramatization, Holmes' life up to a certain point is well-documented, but there's an interesting story to be told about her feelings in response to the media sensation her life became. Although "Joan is Awful" has thrilled millions around the world since it dropped, in a way, few can understand Joan's bizarre situation quite like Elizabeth Holmes.
All seasons of Black Mirror are now available to stream on Netflix.
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