Black Mirror's Rashida Jones reacts to Common People’s "brutal" ending

The episode, Common People, sees Amanda, played by Rashida Jones, suffering a health crisis that could end her life. To save her, her husband Mike, played by Chris O'Dowd, agrees for to have a surgical procedure, courtesy of new tech company Rivermind.

While this restores her to consciousness, it also means her life is now beholden to the company, to which they have to pay monthly subscription fees – which ultimately spiral out of control, as the service becomes more unwieldy and capitalistic.

In the end, with Amanda's life becoming unliveable and Mike unable to keep up the payments, the two make a decision. He smothers her, before entering another room and closing the door, seemingly set on taking his own life.

RadioTimes.com caught up with Jones about the ending, and asked whether it in some ways felt inevitable when she was reading the script.

"No, not at all," she said. "I was gut punched when I read it, I was like, ‘What? Why? That's so mean!’ But I think, in order to make the point, it sort of had to be that way. And I felt like the challenge was just making sure it felt like the only choice. Do you know what I mean?

"Like, where we just were crashing towards that moment. And I think, ultimately, we were just discussing, it is kind of a love story, and it's an act of love. I know it feels really brutal, but both the parallel endings are acts of love."

Explaining what it felt like to shoot the scene, Jones explained that she has "weirdly become kind of adept at a death scene in the past couple years", having starred in a lot of late.

She continued: "This one was funny, because I have to be okay with my death, because I ramp up my serenity. So, in fact, the choice comes out of feeling really good about this being the moment.

"And so the grief of it is not on my side. It's really on Chris's performance, and the audience. So to stay in the mode where it feels like a really good choice – I like that, because I think there's so much fear around death.

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"It just feels like it's the ultimate worst thing that can happen to anybody, and I feel like, culturally, we deserve to explore it in ways where there are people who are happy to die because it feels like the better version of where they are, where they're in pain.

"You know, death with dignity is a real thing, and I like the idea that she chooses this thing for herself in a way that feels good."

The episode is followed by five more instalments - Bête Noire, Hotel Reverie, Plaything, Eulogy and USS Callister: Into Infinity.

That final episode is a sequel to season 4 episode USS Callister, and creator Charlie Brooker has broken down a major moment from it right here.

Black Mirror season 7 is now streaming on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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