"It will be interesting to know how many people will watch 'Shut Up and Dance' and cover up their webcams with Post-It Notes."
"Shut Up and Dance" is a particularly harrowing episode of the new season of Black Mirror—if only because it's built around every teenager's worst nightmare. After retreating to his bedroom for some private time with his computer (hint: he grabs a box of tissues on the way), Kenny (Alex Lawther) gets a message from an unknown number—"WE SAW WHAT YOU DID"—along with a video of the deed, shot directly from his hacked webcam. The hacker offers Kenny a bargain: Complete a series of bizarre tasks, and the video will remain private. Fail, and the video will be sent to every single person in his contact list.
"Shut Up and Dance" is particularly unnerving because it feels so plausible; unlike more far-out Black Mirror episodes like "15 Million Merits" or "White Bear," it takes place in a world that's basically identical to our own. And with cameras on pretty much every device we own, it's horrifying to think about the private moments that a malicious hacker might capture. (True confession: Before I had even finished watching the episode, I made like Zuckerberg, grabbed a Post-It note, and covered up the built-in webcam on my laptop.)
What's it like to be at the center of a story that grapples with the way technology has impacted our collective sense of security and privacy? I talked to "Shut Up and Dance" star Alex Lawther—an acclaimed up-and-comer best known for playing the young Alan Turing in the Oscar-nominated biopic The Imitation Game—about anchoring one of Black Mirror's most nightmarish fables.
I'm glad we're speaking on Black Mirror's release day, because I can only imagine how hard it's been for you to discuss this episode without spoiling any of its secrets.
Yeah! It's lovely that we can finally talk a bit more freely about this. So many Black Mirror episodes hang on the conceit or the twist, so it's a joy to finally be able to share it.
Were you already a Black Mirror fan when you auditioned for the lead role in "Shut Up and Dance"?
Yes. I was a huge fan. [laughs] I particularly liked "White Bear," in which a girl is followed around by people filming her the whole time, and you don’t learn until the end what has led her to end up in such a situation. And then there's the classic—the prime minister and the pig. The very first episode. They're all such wonderful standalone movies, in a similar sort of universe. Very dark. You could just watch one and mull over it for a month. But I sort of had to put all that to one side of my mind, and consider ["Shut Up and Dance"] for what it was on paper. Even if I had never seen Black Mirror before, or heard of it, the script alone was enough to get excited. When you get a script like that… they come rarely. So it was doubly a privilege. To be a part of that, and to be a part of the cult that is Black Mirror.
What it's like to get involved with a project as notoriously secretive as Black Mirror? Did you know what you were getting into?
At first, I auditioned with only a couple of scenes. It was very top-secret. As I got further in the audition process, they released the script—but even in the preliminary scenes I read, I was very excited by the premise. I knew there was a boy called Kenny, trying to deliver a cake to somebody. And he seemed very worried. [laughs] But I didn't know exactly why. That was all I had to go by. I had no idea about the twist that comes at the end.
Did Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, who co-wrote "Shut Up and Dance," have any particular advice for approaching the role? Charlie was present in the read-throughs. And then—and I think, in a wonderful way—he let us get on with it. Gave us the space—between [director James Watkins], [costar Jerome Flynn], and I—to make it our story. We had a lot of freedom. And in his experience working on horror films like The Woman in Black and Eden Lake, James [Watkins] really learned the craft of sustaining incredible suspense over long periods of time, without it ever wavering. James was let loose, and I'm so glad he was, because he's so good at it.
How did you develop your rapport with Jerome Flynn?
Jerome and I didn't meet until… I think until we were in the car together. Until we were shooting. Which, in many ways, was quite helpful—because we were playing this unlikely couple, thrown together in this big old gray car. Their relationship has a slightly farcical quality, and they're uncomfortable in each other's presence—which was aided by the fact that Jerome and I had never worked together before. We shot quite quickly, over three weeks, and that speed meant that we didn't have any time to socialize. By the end of it, we were good friends, but in the beginning, we were… trying to figure each other out, I suppose.
"When we were shooting, there was a news story in the real world about something very similar. And that is a very surreal thing. The 'fiction' you're carrying is actually taking place in the real world."
Three weeks isn't a long shoot—but the events of the episode take place within a single day. How do you maintain that level of intensity?
James Watkins kept giving me gentle nudges, reminding me how high the stakes were for Kenny. The audience might be thinking, "Oh, come on. You haven't done anything that wrong." And then we find out exactly what he has done.
[Ed. note: Spoilers for "Shut Up and Dance" begin below. GQ strongly recommends watching the episode before reading any further.]
"Shut Up and Dance" seems like it's about a boy driven to desperation because he doesn't want his friends and family to see a video of him masturbating to online porn—which would definitely be embarrassing, but maybe not so much that you'd rob a bank or beat a man to death to prevent anyone from seeing it. And then, at the end of the episode, we learn that Kenny was actually watching child pornography. How did such a disturbing twist inform your approach to the character?
For Kenny, it's life or death, really. And that drives him, in spite of his terror, to carry out the tasks he needs to. For me—considering each event [from Kenny's perspective] as it came in the shooting order, as life or death—the stakes were always incredibly high.
The hackers who set the events of the episode into motion are still utterly anonymous when the episode ends; the closest thing we get to an explanation is the trollface meme they send as they break their promise and release the video anyway. How much did you discuss about the true origins and motives of the hackers?
What was sort of wonderful was that the hackers, for us, remained anonymous. The characters have no idea why they're being targeted. Why them, and who are these people [targeting them]? As actors, we didn't give ourselves time to come to any conclusions. And I think that was right. The characters are thrown headlong into this torturous trial, and we actors shared that in common with the characters. We weren't given the chance to intellectualize it.
It's particularly unsettling at a time when major hacks have become such a recurring feature of the actual news cycle.
I’ve seen one or two of the other new Black Mirror episodes, and what's interesting about "Shut Up and Dance" is how close it is to the world we're living in right now. When we were shooting, there was a news story in the real world about something very similar. And that is a very surreal thing, when you're working. The "fiction" that you're carrying is actually taking place in the real world. It will be interesting to know how many people will watch "Shut Up and Dance" and cover up their webcams with Post-It Notes.
I literally did that.
[laughs] Yeah! It’s strange, isn't it? The world we live in, and the double lives we lead. The curation that we do: what our lives are like, and the discrepancy between our online selves and who we actually are behind the screens. It's a strange dichotomy sometimes. But particularly for Kenny.
The vast majority of people don't have secrets nearly as horrible as Kenny's—but we’re still living in a time in which it feels like anyone's privacy can be violated. As a society, do you think there’s anything we can do about that?
That's a very big question. I think we're living in very interesting times. And I think we have this incredible thing, the internet, that can be used for such good, and connect so many people. But at the same time, on the other side of the coin, it can be this very dangerous and anonymous and faceless thing that I don't really understand. Black Mirror, now being on Netflix, can reach all kinds of different people all over the world—with the help of the internet, rather ironically.
Do you have any advice for viewers who are preparing to dig into six brand-new Black Mirror episodes over the weekend?
Particularly with Netflix, there are some series you just binge-watch. But I think with Black Mirror, it's a joy to have some space between each one. And when I go to watch the new episodes of this series, I will try to restrain myself from watching them all at once, and give myself some time to take in the bleakness and intelligence of what Charlie's trying to say about the world, or where the world could go. I think [these episodes] deserve it. A different director, a different cast, a whole different concept... I think it's worth savoring each of them. It’s lovely to have them [all at once], but it's a joy to make them last.
What are you working on now?
I'm just finishing shooting a film about [Winnie the Pooh creator] A.A. Milne—a biopic with Domhnall Gleeson and Margot Robbie. It's lovely. Winnie the Pooh was such a part of my childhood. My kindergarten was named Pooh Corner, after one of A.A. Milne's collections of stories. It's a very sweet story, but a story that doesn't shy away from the darker moments in A.A. Milne's career, and his relationship with his son Christopher. There's an honesty about the effects of that fame… what it did to Christopher and his father, and the negative side of being a world-renowned but fictionalized child star.
But not quite as dark as "Shut Up and Dance"?
No! [laughs] No.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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