‘Black Mirror’: Issa Rae Reacts to ‘Hotel Reverie’ Comparisons to ‘San Junipero’ & Decides Whether It Has a Happy Ending

[Warning: The following post contains spoilers for Black Mirror Season 7 Episode 3, “Hotel Reverie.”]

Meta episodes are quickly becoming part and parcel of the Black Mirror universe, and in Season 7, the segment that takes the honor of dissecting the state (and potentially grim future) of Hollywood in “Hotel Reverie.” The episode is also earning comparisons to all-timer “San Junipero” for the complex and emotional love story that unfolds in the middle of the action, even if the way it ends is arguably far less hopeful.

The episode centers on an ailing studio’s effort to reclaim its glory days by recreating its version of Casablanca, titled Hotel Reverie, using an AI technology that allows a new actor to play the lead. After A-lister Brandy Friday (Issa Rae) expresses interest — and all of the famous Ryans pass on the project — the studio agrees to cast her in a role that was previously played by a white man. The love interest of the film, Dorothy (Emma Corrin), the settings, and the rest of the cast will remain the same, however, so it’s essentially just a plug-and-play situation where Brandy must put on her nubbins, enter this virtual reality version of the film, and recite her lines as the iconic story plays out.

Things get complicated along the way, of course. There are unexpected changes to the script that pop up, and, worse, a technical malfunction leaves everyone but Brandy and Dorothy on pause for an untold number of days (months? years?). The two spend their time in sudden stasis falling deeply, madly in love, though. When the machine is fixed, Dorothy’s memories of Brandy are erased, and Brandy has to film the remainder of the romantic scenes with a broken heart to end the shoot. Once back on solid ground, Brandy continues to reel from what she has lost of her relationship to the long-dead and now-all-code Dorothy, and her only bit of relief is when she’s given a chance to call in to the digital in-world and talk to the fragmented version of Dorothy that remains.

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“To me, personally… no, it’s not a happy ending. It’s sad,” Issa Rae told reporters, including TV Insider, of how it concludes with that phone call. “Yes, you get this connection, but for me, so much of falling in love with someone is sharing those memories together … And even if I do reconnect [with Dorothy], it’s still so isolating for Brandy because you can’t tell your friends without sounding batsh** crazy. Like, ‘Yeah, you guys will never believe what happened? That’s my girl!’ So that’s really sad to me, in a way.”

Still, it isn’t all bad news for Brandy in the end. “I do think the beauty of it is Brandy understanding that the love that she felt was real, and the experience she had was real, and understanding that she has a template or the mold for the connection that she can try to find in the real world,” Rae said. “And I guess a piece of her that is all her own, this connection that still is all her own.”

Despite the gutting loss of the connection Brandy had with Dorothy — and the broader ethical questions over whether a human and AI version of a person can truly be in love — the episode is still one of the most romantically-charged of the series, so Rae fully understands why people would compare the Brandy-Dorothy bond to what Yorkie (Mackenzie Davis) and Kelly (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) had in “San Junipero.”

“It reminded me of some of my favorite episodes… this being one of the most meta episodes, I would say that ‘Joan Is Awful’ was also very meta, down to the Streamberry-Netflix of it. And so there is an element that reminded me of that, in addition to my favorite episode, ‘San Junipero’ and ‘Striking Vipers.’ … It was almost self-referential in so many ways, down to the nubbin. And I was excited about that.”

Still, Rae argues they aren’t interwoven, exactly: “I just hope that people can look at them both separately but also appreciate them both as complements to one another,” she said of the episodes.

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For Rae, the technology that’s employed to make “Hotel Reverie” happen runs counter to everything she stands for as a working actor, writer, and producer of television. “I’m completely against it,” she said. Rae does have a rather reluctant answer at the ready for the question of which movie(s) she’d choose to go back into, though: “If it were a matter of life and death like this, where it’s just like you have to know every line to survive and stay on track, then Clueless or Love and Basketball will be my movie of choice. But I am against it. It is a violation of the original. Filmmakers, as you all know, spend so much time and meticulous detail making the films what they are, editing them to be what they are, and so to just have any average Joe or movie studio, corporation be like, ‘We’re gonna plop a contemporary [actor in]’ is crazy to me. That will piss me off on so many levels.”

The timing of the episode’s conception is no coincidence, of course, as its script was delivered to Rae right after the dual Hollywood strikes in which both actors and writers rebelled against the encroachment of artificial intelligence into the industry. “I got the script after the strike, and so it was especially relevant in terms of exactly what actors and writers are fighting for. So that was also a huge part of the appeal of the script to me and the story. … It just felt like, ‘Oh, this is what we’re fighting against, and this is the worst-case scenario of what we anticipate,'” Rae explained. “It would eliminate so many jobs.” (The release of the similarly anti-AI in entertainment episode “Joan Is Awful” was right around the time of these strikes, but that was just another instance of Charlie Brooker being eerily prophetic.)

On a less serious note, Rae relished the opportunity to play an actress who’s fighting for her identity and voice in show business in “Hotel Reverie.” “Brandy Friday is me, and I felt like her in so many ways of just feeling like… this industry is putting you in this box,” she explained, adding that the shared challenge between her past self while breaking into the business and Brandy is, “‘How can I show them that people like me exist?… I can do more, and I am more than this. And what I’m willing to take any type of risk to show that?’ Hence why she [takes on] this crazy, experimental project.”

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