Josh Hartnett on the shock of ‘Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea’ twist being ‘even darker than I imagined’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
“This is as messed up and dark as anything I’ve ever done,” admits Josh Hartnett about “Black Mirror: Beyond the Sea.” In our recent webchat he adds, “I want to push my understanding of people beyond what I knew before. I never want to play the same thing twice. There are things I’ve done that have been dark, but nothing quite like this.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
“Black Mirror” is the anthology series created by Charlie Brooker in which each episode takes on new characters and stories to tell a dystopian tale using sci-fi technology.
“Beyond the Sea” is a featured installment from the sixth season of the show. Set in 1969, Hartnett plays David, while Aaron Paul plays Cliff. They are astronauts on a two-man mission. Technology allows both men to send their consciousness to replicas of their bodies back on earth. When tragedy strikes David’s family, Cliff offers him the opportunity to inhabit his replica. This leads to conflict between the two, before a shocking violent twist as David takes matters into his own hands.
Hartnett reveals the end was “even darker than I imagined when I was reading the script. In a way there’s a dark logic to it. It’s a two-person mission. If one person dies, the other one dies. I assumed he was going to kill Cliff. That is what’s so great about Charlie, he’s always playing with your expectations in such a brilliant way. You know it’s going to be dark, so you expect a thing that’s very dark. Then it becomes somehow darker.”
On what David was thinking in the film’s final moment, the actor thinks, “That last gesture is an offer. Do you want to continue, or do you want to end this? He’s left the decision up to Cliff and he’s offering him the choice: survival or death. David was always looking for understanding on the ship and Cliff was resistant and unresponsive. He was sick of the platitudes and not being understood.”
Working with Paul on the spaceship set was less horrific. Hartnett says “We had a really nice time being on that spaceship and going through that emotional roller coaster. We kept pushing it to be weirder and weirder. With the director John Crowley, the three of us just pushed ourselves to be as creative as possible.”
The “Oppenheimer” star reflects that from “Black Mirror,” he learned “never go to space. The isolation and loneliness were so palpable in this piece.” He also notes that, “David is allegorical in a certain sense, but I don’t see a lot of parallels between what he’s going through and my life. And I hope I never do.”
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