Note: This story contains spoilers from “Black Mirror” Season 7, Episode 3, “Hotel Reverie.”
In “Black Mirror’s” “Hotel Reverie,” Hollywood A-list actress Brandy Friday (Issa Rae) is thrust into a classic romance movie, kickstarting a love story between her and one of the film’s AI-generated characters, played by a star from the 1940s (Emma Corrin).
With creator Charlie Brooker drawing inspiration from “Brief Encouter” and “Casablanca,” Corrin re-watched both as they prepared to play ’40s movie star Dorothy Chambers, whose rendition of Clara in “Hotel Reverie” is revitalized with an immersive technology that places Brandy into the lead role of Dr. Alex Palmer.
“I’ve been watching a lot of ’40s films, anyway, because I’ve been on quite down a Jimmy Stewart hole, so I was picking up all of those films,” Corrin told TheWrap, noting they paid close attention to the “energy and the tone of the acting and how it differs from now.”
As Brandy gets plunged into the world of “Hotel Reverie” with the help of Awkwafina’s Kimmy and Harriet Walter’s Judith, she quickly learns the characters, including Corrin’s Clara, will accept her as Dr. Alex Palmer, despite not looking like the original film’s Humphrey Bogart-esque male lead. While the environment is shocking to Brandy, she follows the cues in the story until the tech hits a glitch and freezes the film, leaving Brandy and Clara roaming amidst frozen characters before Brandy reveals to Clara that they are in a movie, and that Clara, isn’t a real person — which Brooker said “fractures something” in Clara.
Clara is resistant to the idea, but the harsh reality quickly hits her when she steps into a void and memories from Dorothy, who poured much of herself into the role of Clara, come flooding in.
“It’s like she gets a full f–king shot of reality right in the face and she becomes Dorothy at that moment,” Brooker said, while Corrin added, “she’s sort of Clara, but then realizing who she is, it’s a dual identity … all those parts of Dorothy in her and then when she has that moment, she awakened to who she actually is.”
With Clara’s newfound identity as Dorothy, she and Brandy have a whirlwind romance as the film — and the world of “Hotel Reverie” — remains paused, even leading to Dorothy telling Brandy she loves her, which Brandy questions if is real.
Rae notes the love is “real to Brandy,” but she said their love isn’t real in “actual reality, saying “you can have a one-sided love, but the love that Brandy craves and that she experienced in that moment is not real in this realm.”
“The wonderful thing about the episode is it brings into question what we consider as real, and also the circumstances in which you can find a human connection,” Corrin added.
And just like that, their romance is interrupted when the film starts working again, and Dorothy’s memory of the time in between is wiped, but Brooker notes Corrin’s character still takes some of Dorothy with her. “When the film starts again and they jump back and reboot her, she’s Clara, but with the hint of Dorothy — she’s sort of 75% Clara, 25% Dorothy,” Brooker said. “From that point, she’s Clara with a little more Dorothy in her, a little more agency.”
Once the film begins again, Brandy is still bonded to Clara, and even puts her life on the line by considering not saying the final line of the movie — “I’ll be yours forevermore” — which triggers the ending credits and pulls Brandy’s consciousness out of the film and back into real life. When the events of the film change, leading Brandy to say the final line over Clara’s dying body, Brandy says the line and gets pulled out of the film.
Their story isn’t over there, though, as the episode ends with Brandy receiving a package from the company that allows her to speak with a previous version of Dorothy on the phone.
“The version who we meet at the very, very end — what we might call our bittersweet Zoom call — is, I think, the sweetest way of putting it, a version of Clara that probably has the ability to become Dorothy.”
Despite this Dorothy’s memory wiped of the love story between Clara and Brandy, Awkwafina said their love is “definitely real,” saying “all we really have in connection is memories — if you wipe that, you still are people that might have the circumstance of that.”
While this connection – however artificial it might be — seems to be satisfying for Brandy by the end of the episode, Rae said she hopes Brandy finds love in her real life as well. “It is very clear that Brandy wants and craves excitement that she’s not getting in the outside world, and she got a taste of what’s possible and the connection that she’s seeking in this this AI-constructed world,” Rae said. “I want that for her in real life — I want it to be tangible.”
While Brooker said “Hotel Reverie” presents a different, less “sinister” version of how AI is being used in the real world, Rae said the technology creates a “violation” of the original filmmaker’s decisions. “You are messing with someone’s creative integrity,” Rae said. “The filmmaker that created this movie, ‘Hotel Reverie,’ they were super intentional and meticulous about bringing this project to the screen, and now you’re just recasting it.”
“I’m personally not a big fan of [AI] — it scares me — and I think it would be a terrible thing if it started taking over the creative process and people’s jobs,” Corrin said, noting the story services the love story between Brandy and Clara/Dorothy.
Awkwafina noted that, like many “Black Mirror” episodes, “Hotel Reverie” teeters on the line of ethics, noting “when people fall on hard times, maybe things can become a little unethical … there’s a kind of inevitability about mixing those two worlds.”
The episode also has a renewed relevancy when it comes to AI and acting, with Rae noting she read the episode right after the strike. “I remember thinking, I guess that’s cool in theory, but I don’t want it to cross any other lines — I don’t want to watch people play the leads of my favorite movies and alter the storyline,” Rae said. “It’s one thing to be a fan of something, and just want to be in the room that Tom Hanks was in ‘Big’ and play the piano with him … But, it’s another thing to want to talk as Tom Hanks and and create a whole new movie and version like that … We don’t need to be able to do everything.”
“Even as an actor reading and participating in the script, as with all ‘Black Mirror’ episodes, [there’s] a little quiet sense of doom,” Awkwafina said. “Technology is very scary, just like anything that’s unknown is anxiety-inducing, but I think we have to find out how it works for us.”
“Black Mirror” Season 7 is now streaming on Netflix.
