Salma Hayek says she is ‘very done with technology’ after Black Mirror episode

By Hannah Roberts, PA Entertainment Reporter

Salma Hayek has said she is “very done with technology” after filming for season six of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian Netflix series Black Mirror.

Hayek appears in the episode Joan Is Awful alongside Schitt’s Creek star Annie Murphy and said the actress convinced her that Brooker was a psychic.

Joan Is Awful centres around Murphy’s character and explores complex advances in technology, which Hayek said she found “confusing”.

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Talking about what it was like to film the episode, the Frida actress, 56, told the PA news agency: “I’m very done with technology already.

“I was lost from the beginning and I stayed lost till the end, and I kept asking Annie, ‘what is this?’ She’s kind of a nerd, I know she is a hot blonde, but she’s very nerdy and very good with conspiracy theory.

“She’s certain that Charlie is psychic and she convinced me. But she would explain it to me (the plot) and I kind of said, ‘Okay, got it. I got it’ and like an hour later, I would go, ‘but wait a minute, what did you say, what’s happening here?’ And, yeah, it was confusing for me.”

In the episode, Hayek plays a version of herself and says she was able to have fun and find a sense of “freedom”.

“I was acting, having a lot of fun playing the different versions of myself that I hear sometimes that other people think I am, and it’s not even me,” she told PA.

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“It was such a freedom to go there and also playing versions of myself that I don’t dare to be or to do, and were very entitled and over the top, but at the same time insecure and fragile.”

She continued: “My favourite part was the relationship I have with Annie, it’s a very unusual relationship, the one that we play.

“I don’t think it exists in movie history or in real life. It wouldn’t have mattered what I was playing – that was such a gift.”

Joan Is Awful is one of five hour-long episodes that comprise Black Mirror’s sixth season, which debuted globally on Netflix on Thursday.

Brooker said that he wanted to “throw out some of the core assumptions of what a Black Mirror episode is” when they filmed for the series.

He explained: “When we started doing the show, there weren’t many dystopian sci-fi shows.

“With season six, there has been a conscious effort to rip up the rule book, keep it unpredictable for viewers and maybe expand its remit.”