Charlie Brooker says Miley Cyrus is in Black Mirror season 5 because ‘it’ll piss people off’ The popstar was a surprising choice – but she drew from her own experiences of the music industry for the episode

Charlie Brooker has revealed that he didn’t ever believe Miley Cyrus would want to appear in the new series of Black Mirror, but that she accepted the role, as the singer said “it’ll piss people off, and pissing people off is kind of my thing.”

The actress and popstar, 26, was a surprise casting choice for season five of the sci-fi thriller series, and in the episode Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, she appears as Ashley O, a purple-haired, bubbly popstrel, who spouts out platitudes and glib empowering messages to her fans.

This being Black Mirror though, things soon get somewhat darker for the singer and one of her fans, Rachel (played by Angourie Rice), when she is given an Alexa-type robo-doll of Ashley O, complete with the singer’s personality, as a make-believe friend.

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‘We thought it was fucking stupid talk for us to want her to play the part’

Speaking at a press screening of the episode, Brooker – who writes the show, with Annabel Jones as executive producer – explained how the multi-million album selling star got involved: “After the script was written we were just discussing who could play the part of an international pop star and we thought in a dream world, well, it would be somebody like Miley Cyrus but we thought that it was fucking stupid talk and that we might as well be wanting to resurrect Oliver Reed or something.

“But it turned out that she’d seen the show and liked it and she read the script and liked it and then before you knew it we were having a Skype chat and then she said she’d do it.”

The similarities between the pop star character and Cyrus’ own experiences

Jones said that Cyrus drew on her experiences of being a child star, from appearing in tween TV comedy series Hannah Montana, to battling to break out of the saccharine pop world, and there were definite similarities between the character and her own life: “There were quite a few things in the script that she could identify with, and she’s got a very sarcastic sense of humour she’s very acerbic, she’s very funny and she delights in subverting things.

“Her whole career has been about the Disney pop-star who tries to carve out her own identity and as a result has faced a lot of opposition from her label and her fans in some respect. She’s been on that journey, so she found that hilarious, she was like, ‘Oh my God, I can have so much fun with this’.”

Charlie added: “I seem to remember she said: ‘Oh, it’ll piss people off and pissing people off is kind of my thing.”

Cyrus fed into the script and the production, the showrunners said, and offered input into all aspects of the hour-long episode, which will appear on Netflix on June 5.

Brooker said: “From the off, Miley had all sorts of little observations – opinions on the performance, on the music and it was interesting how many things she said rang true to her. In our film, Ashley is surrounded by a dodgy doctor feeding her pills, that’s not that far-fetched from other pop stars.”

Jones added: “She talked a lot about her experiences and the details of her life have been engineered into the script. She had lots of thoughts about the music and the performance of the music and the look, and the relationship between the idol and the fan, which is a very interesting and powerful relationship in today’s world.

“Miley tries to be true to her fans, there are often lots of artists where it’s all carefully managed and touch upon that in the film, also the idea of empowerment and the messages that pop stars give to their fans. We should be very careful how we manage that and the messages we give and you see Rachel following, believing everything her idol says. Does it actually help her? There are so many dark issues.”

Nine Inch Nails also on board for the episode

Fans of a heavier sound than bubble-gum pop might find some of Ashley O’s songs – all performed by Miley – familiar. That’s because they’re all reworked Nine Inch Nails songs.

Brooker says he had to get clearance from Trent Reznor from the band to use the tracks and to change their lyrics, but the frontman for the band was on board immediately when they pitched the idea to him.

“Trent got it straight away, it was via email and he was really happy pretty quickly. He wanted to see the script and I got to re-write his lyrics in a chirpy way. I’m not the best lyricist in the world, in the first song she’s singing: ‘I’m stoked on ambition and verve’ instead of ‘You’re gonna get what you deserve’.”

Jones said: “He thought it was very funny, he found the dark comedy very entertaining. There are lots of dark concepts in the film and we just enjoy that sort of childish subversion of them.”

“Sometimes we like to go a bit Pixar and other times we like to go a bit Texas Chainsaw Massacre – it really depends on our whim.” Charlie Brooker

The hour-long episode definitely falls as one of the more lighter stories in the anthology, which has been running since 2011, but Brooker explained that the series isn’t always doom-mongering about technology and the future.

He said: “I think because people expect Black Mirror to be somebody like frowning at a transparent phone until their life falls apart, it’s quite nice occasionally to not do that and upend it.

“Sometimes we like to go a bit Pixar and other times we like to go a bit Texas Chainsaw Massacre – it really depends on our whim.”

Black Mirror series five will be on Netflix on June 5.