Emma Corin and Haolu Wang – Picture: Netflix
On April 9th, at the iconic BFI Southbank in London, we attended a Black Mirror season 7 preview event. Attended by creator Charlie Brooker, the event previewed feature-length episode Hotel Reverie — starring Emma Corrin and Issa Rae.
In Hotel Reverie, Hollywood A-list actor Brandy Friday (Issa Rae) is thrown into an ultra-immersive high-tech remake of a vintage romantic movie. Surrounded by artificially intelligent beings, including the film’s original lead 1940s movie star Dorothy Chambers (Emma Corrin). It’s not your normal acting gig. What’s more, her job is to ardently stick to the script, for if not, she may never make it home. But when the gig becomes way too immersive to the point of romance, leaving is not an easy option. Shot in both colour for the modern day and black-and-white for the scenes set inside the virtual ‘set’, the episode is a flawless descent into everything from old and new filmmaking, to forbidden love.
Following the BFI screening of the episode, Charlie Brooker was on stage joined by star Emma Corrin, director Haolu Wang (who we first reported on being attached to season 7 back in May 2024), and the show’s producers. Let’s go over some of the highlights!
To start, Brooker detailed his ambition for Hotel Reverie. “I mean, it’s kind of… It is a love letter to classic films, of which I’ve probably not seen enough,” he admitted. “So this felt like the perfect sort of venue to show it. I hope people think we did the vintage movie industry proud.”
As for how the idea of the feature-length episode originated, Brooker revealed that the story went through several iterations in his mind before landing on the final idea:
“Initially I was thinking, I had two ideas in my head. One was I knew for quite a long time that I wanted to do a horror story about somebody using technology to restore an old black-and-white silent horror film, and they discover they can talk to people in the film. This was one idea I had, but I wasn’t quite sure what the story was beyond one sort of creepy moment.
And then I had another idea, which was, well, what if there was a high-tech way of replacing an actor in a big action movie, like a sort of Bond movie, and the wrong sort of character is thrown into that?”
Ultimately, the episode found its heart, not in horror or action, but in romance. “I watched Brief Encounter, which I hadn’t seen before,” Brooker said, describing the 1945 British classic as both “heartbreaking but mundane.” That quiet emotional resonance became the key to unlocking Hotel Reverie.
As for the wider season, he touched on the recurring emotional elements throughout the latest batch of episodes.
“It’s an emotive season. We’ve got a couple of episodes where it’s the sort of, you know, in a way, the old blackberry gut punch. We’ve got one that sort of lures you in and goes, ‘hello’. And then we’ve got a couple of kind of heartbroken episodes or sort of emotive episodes. We’ve got a couple that are kind of romps. So again, it’s like, it’s a mix.”
He compared the show’s eclectic nature to being in a band — some episodes hit like “grungy, angry punk singles,” while others are more like “heartfelt love ballads.” And he’s well aware that this variety divides fans.
“It means that there’s always a section of the audience you’re going to piss off,” he joked, before adding that one of his guilty pleasures is psychologically profiling people based on their favourite episodes.
Picture: Netflix
Emma Corrin discusses her role in Hotel Reverie!
In addition to Brooker, star Emma Corrin weighed in on the immense challenge of playing essentially two roles. “Yeah, it was two characters, which is sort of kind of amazing as a challenge and also a bit of, like, where do I start, especially when you’re talking about 1940s,” she said.
She immersed herself in the films of the era, particularly the work of Jimmy Stewart, studying the distinctive physicality and emotional expressiveness of classic Hollywood stars. “I was watching a lot of films from that era and I was just struck by how all the actors, especially women, female actors, just have this such poise and such a specific way of articulating and gesturing and holding themselves and especially in terms of their expression.”
To help bridge the gap between performance and authenticity, Corrin worked closely with movement coach Polly Bennett, who introduced her to a YouTube reel of 1940s bloopers. “It was wild seeing them break,” she explained. “It gave me this place to start from — okay, the director changes one thing, and then Clara is another thing.” That attention to detail helped her navigate the layered transformation between Dorothy and Clara, integrating elements of both as the story progressed.
Corrin is the latest huge name to join the cast of Black Mirror — and it turns out she’s been a fan from the start. “I’ve been a huge fan since the beginning,” she said. “I mean, when Black Mirror came out, the first thing, it was just completely different, wasn’t it? Completely original, hadn’t seen anything like that before.” She went on to reveal that her favorite episode to date is Shut Up and Dance, a choice sure to earn knowing nods from long-time fans.
Picture: Ashley Hurst / What’s on Netflix
Black Mirror season 7 is now streaming on Netflix globally.
Rating: TV-MA
