cake-emu:

So many new details and insights into the making of San Junipero here, from this excerpt of the new ‘Inside Black Mirror’ book.

Some highlights:

Writer Charlie Brooker, and Exec Producer Annabel Jones on developing the story:

Charlie Brooker: At some point, the thought arrived of making this a same-sex couple. Rather than that feeling like a gimmick, it became both relevant and irrelevant to the story. It informed a whole other layer because these people couldn’t have got married as two women in 1987.

Annabel Jones: I also love that this is a story about two mature women, finding each other and falling in love. And you forget that they’re old. It’s a cliché, but when you’re old you’re still mentally and emotionally alive to all experiences. It’s just your body that’s letting you down. And so, to be free of that and go and fuck as much as they want, and drink as much as they want … why wouldn’t these two mature women want to be doing this? But you don’t think of virtual reality as empowering the old. So it was just such a great fusion of ideas, all coming together in an emotionally satisfying way.

Production Designer Joel Collins, and Director Owen Harris on the pre-production stage:

Joel Collins: Before we built Tucker’s Bar for real, we built it in 3-D. I gave Charlie and Owen a VR headset, so they could walk around the bar and and look at the space. In the industry that process is just beginning, so we marched ahead a bit. We were Black Mirror, after all.

Owen Harris: You could walk around this VR bar and say things like, “Can we push the bar back a bit? Can we make the balcony a bit wider?

Mackenzie Davis on her character’s costuming:

Mackenzie Davis: I loved the very first Yorkie outfit: the pleated khaki shorts and aqua sweater over a pink polo. It still makes me laugh that she could have put together anything for this new self and she chose something that looks like her mom laid it out on her bed the night before a charity golf tournament! But it was authentically her, and there’s something so beautiful about this woman choosing to be authentically herself in this moment of unlimited possibility. The thrill of her identity and her queerness is the event, the reason for all of this, not the opportunity to reinvent her exterior self and sell a coolness that would appeal to anyone else.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw on the dance scenes:

Gugu Mbatha-Raw: We had so much fun! Kelly’s shoulder pads, and that rhythmic shoulder thing, were totally stolen from Janet. In terms of style, I definitely took inspiration from other artists like Prince and Whitney Houston. For me, it was a great chance to be goofy and expressive. I’d come off some quite intense movie roles, so it was nice to do something playful and not take it all so seriously. The dancing was a big part of that: It was all about expressing and celebrating Kelly’s life.

Charlie Brooker on the difficulty of writing without revealing too much too soon:

Charlie Brooker: Writing a script like that is like being forced to come up with dialogue that rhymes because it’s got to do two different things at once. It’s got to sound like two people talking, like they might in an ’80s movie nightclub scene, but it’s also got to make sense as stuff that old people in a simulation might say and do. So instead of wondering what to do next, you have a constant little problem to solve. I had to get these two women to meet and fall in love, while constantly distracting the viewer from this thing in the corner of the room.

The Oral History of ‘San Junipero’