From questionable social algorithms to murderous surveillance systems, the dystopian anthology series Black Mirror doesn’t shy away from shining a dark light on the complex relationship between humans and technology. Created by Charlie Brooker, the decade-old series toes the line between bleak and thought-provoking, with technological and psychological horrors brought to life by incorporating degrees of mortality into each episode. “Joan Is Awful,” the standout episode of the final season 6, follows the mundane activities of a smooth-talking woman named Joan (Annie Murphy) as she discovers her life has been transformed by the powers of AI-generated content into a glossy TV show starring Salma Hayek on Streamberry, a Netflix surrogate streaming platform. Here, Brooker discusses straying into absurdist humor while maintaining the process of creating a perpetual state of mesmerizing horror.

DEADLINE: Where did the concept of “Joan is Awful” come from?

CHARLIE BROOKER: I had ideas floating around in my head for a while. One, I wanted to do a story about a news network that was constantly putting out deepfake footage of things and political candidates doing ridiculous things to humiliate them or make them seem heroic. But it was about them claiming it was satire, while also spreading deepfake disinformation. But I couldn’t figure out how to get into that story. The other thing was that the phrase “Joan is Awful” would not leave my head for some reason. Imagine if your name was Joan one day and you woke up to an exclusive story on the front page of the newspaper that said, “Joan is Awful?” And it was just interviews with everyone you know saying you were awful for little things. But I couldn’t get into it.

Then my wife and I started watching The Dropout , which I really enjoyed. And we were talking about how close it was to the present in dramatizing things that had just happened. And so I imagined what would happen if Elizabeth Holmes turned on the TV and there was The Dropout . So all those ideas that I had came together, and that's what "Joan is Awful" is. It's a story about an average person who turns on the TV, and there's this deep fake show that dramatizes her life and makes her look awful.