Rashida Jones is trading laughs for tears in Black Mirror’s Season 7 opener. The bleak episode follows a lower-middle-class couple, elementary school teacher Amanda (Jones), and construction worker Mike (Chris O’Dowd), whose lives come crashing down when Amanda is diagnosed with a brain tumor. When she falls into a coma, Mike has to decide whether to let Amanda die or agree to let a subscription service, Rivermind, operate her brain. Upon agreeing to the experimental procedure, the couple learns just how nefarious the deal really is. Here, Jones talks about dystopia and love in the time of increasingly unchecked technology.
DEADLINE: There is a lot going on in this Black Mirror episode. From the flimsy healthcare system, infertility, low wages, relationships and euthanasia. Where would you like to start?
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RASHIDA JONES: Honestly, if I didn’t know [series creator] Charlie Brooker, I would absolutely see Black Mirror as full tech panic. But I don’t think that’s what it is. It’s hard to say with this episode because it’s so dreadful and bleak. The couple’s situation is intractable. There are very few choices in this episode for them. I think the idea that tech is so exciting to people who work and innovate in tech that sometimes there is a rush. There’s an excited momentum that bypasses a moral compass.
DEADLINE: Chris O’Dowd, another actor like yourself known for their comedic prowess, plays your husband. However, this episode leans more towards drama and tragedy than comedy. Tell me more about working together to create this dynamic.
JONES: We’ve worked together before, so we’ve known each other for a long time. But Chris is an excellent actor. I think people know him the most for comedy, but he’s a classically trained, Broadway on the West End, real-deal actor as well. You can see that in this episode. He’s so emotionally available, and I think this doesn’t work unless you have a realistic relationship. But it also doesn’t work if you have somebody who’s too comic because there’s a lot of deep, dark sh*t happening here and you need somebody who can do both.
DEADLINE: Amanda’s agency comes into question in this episode. She’s not the one who decides to get the procedure; Mike chooses for her. And then, eventually, ads start running through her body when they get priced out of the top ad-free tier. What’s your take on her agency?
JONES: If you’ve ever had a loved one who’s sick or goes to the ICU or ends up in a coma or has a Do Not Resuscitate… to me, this is not genderized. Your emergency contact has a lot of responsibility and Amanda is not conscious, so he didn’t have a choice. She was going to die, or he had to sign up for this thing. There wasn’t a third choice. In the fear of losing her altogether, of course, he’s just going to cobble together whatever to make that work. In the end, Charlie intentionally wrote it for them to make the decision to [end her life] together. There’s stuff that clearly happened off-screen before that moment at the end when Amanda says, “It’s time.” They’ve had that conversation and she’s making that decision from a place of serenity because she’s on Rivermind Lux, which I think is really beautiful as somebody who believes that there should be dignity around how we die. That’s your last active agency in this one precious life.
And my interpretation is that he does, and does his own thing [to end his life] because he can’t live without her afterward. There’s something slightly romantic in that they’re in this together. They did everything they could for each other to live a meaningful life, and they just no longer have that option.
DEADLINE: You and Tracee Ellis Ross have worked together before too. What was it like working with her in this capacity?
JONES: She’s a beautifully dressed, humane villain. It was so great actually because we’ve known each other for a really long time and we have a deep friendship and connection. And Black-ish was just so fun because what a ridiculous character I got to play on that show. But this was nice because it’s almost like our friendship. I trust her. So, to enter this relationship trusting somebody who is upselling me in a pretty malevolent way, at the end of the day, it really works. Because I could feel my own disappointment as she kept upselling us.
DEADLINE: What would you like people to take from this episode?
JONES: I don’t know if it’s blind acceptance or surrender to the fact that we live in the tech era. In the smallest ways, we could probably be more tech-literate about how we move through the world. I’m guilty of this, but for example, you agree to the user agreements when you get a new update from an app. You’re not even looking at those. I don’t think we necessarily take these freedoms for granted, but we think that systems are set up for us in a way that’s really considering our best interest, and the truth is they’re not. There’s a lot of evidence to support the idea that we should maybe be more suspicious and slightly more discerning when it comes to how we use tech in our lives and how we invite tech into our homes.
DEADLINE: What app are you mind-numbingly obsessed with right now?
JONES: I really like TikTok. It’s just so good. It reminds me of watching TV in the ‘80s because I just scroll through, and I get to see people from all over the world doing great dances, being funny, telling me about gut health, and showing me their beautiful apartments. I do occasionally take breaks from it; I’ll take it off my phone a lot.
DEADLINE: What did you do during the Great TikTok shutdown of 2025?
JONES: Oh god, what a couple of days. I was sad, but then I was like, “This is probably better for me. I don’t actually need this.” You know what I mean? If it did end up being permanent, it would have been OK. Though I do think it’s a great place to get news. There’s some truly great global content on there. I watch this guy who makes these beautiful meals for his son in the mountains of Nepal. I would have missed him.
DEADLINE: Between Black Mirror, Sunny and the upcoming sci-fi In the Blink of an Eye, are you in your dystopian era right now?
JONES: It seems that way, right? I didn’t design it that way at all. I think seeing me in Black Mirror and thinking about me being on a beloved comedy like Parks and Rec or The Office, there’s something familiar about me that makes people feel cozy. So, I think people probably want to see that character in this bleak circumstance. There’s something about that combination that feels like they can enter through the lens of somebody they trust or something. But I love it. I am obsessed with dystopia; it’s been that way since I was younger. I love Ray Bradbury and The Twilight Zone. So, I guess my soul has come home to this.
DEADLINE: Your next project, The Invite, for which you co-wrote the screenplay, is being directed by Olivia Wilde. It also stars Seth Rogen, Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton. What can you tell us about that?
JONES: It’s a great cast. It’s going incredibly well. I am so excited about it. It’s very much in the vein of the movies that I grew up loving and the movies that [co-writer] Will McCormack and I have written in the past. We started with Celeste and Jesse Forever, but we like to write movies about the nuance of relationships, and this is a movie that is the interrogation of what it’s like to be in a marriage and a long-term marriage. Within that long commitment, what parts of you die, what are the parts of you that you forget, what are the parts of you that you miss, and how to come back to that.