Black Mirror lands a bunch of new actors to technologically torture
Black Mirror has lined up so much star power for its seventh season that just reading the Deadline announcement kind of feels like holding a mirror to modern-day society in itself.
In March, Netflix revealed that the sci-fi show was doing a follow-up to its popular (and horrifying) season four Star Trek riff, "USS Callister," writing in a press release, "USS Callister will return… Robert Daly is dead, but for the crew of the USS Callister, their problems are just beginning." Now, the series has confirmed that Cristin Milioti and Jimmi Simpson, who starred in the original episode as sentient beings trapped in a Trek-themed open-world game, are returning for the sequel. It seems like Michaela Coel and Jesse Plemons won't be making a return trip. That makes sense for Plemons, since his character died in space, but maybe Coel's actually made it out.
Roles and episode details for the other new cast members have not yet been revealed, but the list includes Awkwafina, Milanka Brooks, Peter Capaldi, Emma Corrin, Patsy Ferran, Paul Giamatti, Lewis Gribben, Osy Ikhile, Rashida Jones, Siena Kelly, Billy Magnussen, Rosy McEwen, Chris O’Dowd, Issa Rae, Paul G. Raymond, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Harriet Walter.
As the years have gone on, "this is just like Black Mirror" has increasingly been used as a refrain to process all the terrible things happening on our planet. The flip side of this is that one might expect the actual show to lag as the real world almost outpaces its bleak vision. That wasn't the case in season six, however, which Kayleigh Dray wrote "zigged where you’d usually expect it to zag" in her review for The A.V. Club. "Whereas past seasons have focused wholly on lives invaded, manipulated, and transformed by tech, however, this one deals instead with the corruptibility of humankind," she continued.
That was just one year ago, but the world has already gotten a whole lot worse. Hopefully, this new crop of episodes—and the stars that lead them—will be able to keep up.