SPOILER WARNING: This story discusses major plot developments in the “Black Mirror” episode “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” currently streaming on Netflix.
Since the “Black Mirror” episode “USS Callister” first streamed on Netflix in 2017, Cristin Milioti has been getting questions about when there would be a sequel.
The original episode is split between the life of deferential real-world video game programmer Nanette Cole (Milioti), who works on the massively multiplayer online game “Infinity,” and a virtual reproduction of the starship from the “Star Trek”-like TV series “Space Fleet,” generated by the inventor of “Infinity,” Robert Daly (Jesse Plemmons). Robert has been stealing the DNA of his coworkers — including venal “Infinity” CEO James Walton (Jimmi Simpson) — to fashion digital, sentient clones that he forces to live inside his nerd fantasy of being a starship captain. That is, until he copies Nanette’s DNA, and her digital clone foments a mutiny that results in Robert’s real-life consciousness slipping into oblivion, as the virtual Nanette and her USS Callister shipmates head off into an infinite digital frontier.
The possibilities of that ending sparked immediate speculation that “Black Mirror” creator Charlie Brooker — who co-wrote “USS Callister” with William Bridges — would make the long-running anthology’s first sequel episode, to chronicle the continuing adventures of Nanette and her crew, including clones of fellow “Infinity” employees Karl (Billy Magnussen), Nate (Osy Ikhile), Elena (Milanka Brooks) and Kabir (Paul G. Raymond).
That speculation became reality in 2019, when Milioti says she started talking with Brooker about what a “USS Callister” sequel might look like. “It went through — this is not an exaggeration — like, 500 iterations,” Milioti tells Variety. “How would we all get back in the same space? Should it be a series? He really explored every single avenue. At one point, I had so many different versions knocking around in my brain. It would come together and then fall apart and come together and fall apart. It was a real journey.”
More than seven years later, the final result, “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” arrives as the capstone to the seventh season of “Black Mirror,” written by Brooker, Bridges, Bisha K. Ali (“Ms. Marvel”) and Bekka Bowling (“Solos”); Toby Haynes (“Andor”) returns to direct. Set a few months after the events of the first episode, we learn that, far from utopian bliss, life on the digital USS Callister is grim: Nanette and her crew are forced to shake down the avatars of real-world players for “Infinity” credits so they can scrape together enough money for in-game purchases of ammo, fuel and food. Because the Callister’s crew don’t have gamertags, players begin flooding “Infinity” message boards with complaints about being ripped off, which sets off a chain of events that result in the real-world Nanette not only learning for the first time about the existence of her digital counterpart, but meeting her inside the game.
The encounter is short-lived, alas: Back in the real world, Nanette is accidentally mowed down by a car just as James, her boss, pleads with her to not expose that his game contains extremely illegal digital clones. With a panicked James racing to save his ass by erasing the Callister and its crew, digital Nanette takes the Callister to the heart of “Infinity,” where a secret digital clone of Robert has been spending years continuously creating new worlds for players to explore. After Nanette pleads her case to Robert, he agrees to save the Callister — but only after he creates another copy of Nanette to be his permanent companion within the center of the game. To save herself from a life of subjugation, Nanette kills the virtual Robert, causing the total collapse of “Infinity” — but not before Robert’s program sends Nanette’s digital consciousness back into her comatose human body.
There is a twist, of course: The rest of the Callister crew is also integrated into real-world Nanette’s brain, making them passive spectators to her life. Milioti talked with Variety about the implications of that ending, what it was like to act with herself — and the “sicko” part of making “Into Infinity” that she most enjoyed.
When did you first know that there was even a possibility of a sequel actually happening?
Well, the last five years really melts together, doesn’t it? Charlie and I ever had always talked about it. I’d end up in London in the years after we made it, and we’d always get dinner, and he would mention that he wanted to return to it. But I think the first time there was a concrete conversation about it was in 2019.
What were those early conversations like about where the story might go? In early interviews, you talked about the possibility that real-world Nanette would be under investigation for Robert’s murder.
I’m almost positive it was at one point, and then I think it just was abandoned, because it was maybe too much.
What other possible threads did you look at?
I think there were multiple clones of everyone, four or five of each person — like, it got out of hand. I remember getting a real kick out of it, even though I’m sure that would have been utterly nightmarish to film. Not for me, I would have liked it.
How much did you contribute to the development of the story and where it went?
Charlie was so open to the myriad of questions and thoughts I had in terms of really trying to find the emotional throughline of how similar the two Nanettes are, and how different they are, and the best ways in which to express that. I never was like, “What if it’s this?” It’s very much his baby. I just was thankfully welcomed in early on with the earliest drafts of it, just to ask a lot of questions. I’m sure it was very annoying for him, but he was really lovely about it.
What kind of questions did you have?
The time kept shifting, like, sometimes it would be a couple weeks later, sometimes it would be a year later. I think he was sort of exploring what the exact timeline would be. So my questions would shift based on things like how long has it been this bad in this world, and how much does she know, and how much does she suspect? As those things were changing, I was just trying to get as good a handle on it as I could.
What did you make of where it finally landed? Because there is a reversal of expectations: The first episode ends with this feeling of hope and possibility for the Callister crew, and it turns out that their lives are pretty terrible.
I don’t think I had a strong opinion, either way. I just started to feel like, oh, wow, isn’t that so like life, that wherever you go, there you are. And while I think Nanette in the virtual world is still pulling things off that the real world her could quite literally only imagine, she’s still having to deal with the same parts of existing in the world: Disappointment that you’re not better at your job, disappointment at the people that you have to work with, wishing that you could figure something out that feels impossible in the moment. I thought that was interesting.
How did you differentiate your performance between virtual Nanette and real world Nanette?
Some of it’s physical. Their postures are different. But I wanted to be subtle as well, their lives are so unimaginably different, but it hasn’t been that much time. The virtual Nanette is extremely smart and wily, but she is still herself in these outrageous circumstances that she never thought she’d find herself in. So while she’s certainly leaps and bounds ahead of the office Nanette in terms of confidence and having to be ready for unimaginable circumstances at any moment, they’re still similar. When they finally meet each other, I found interesting the ways in which one admires the other and the other seems disappointed, which I think is like what happens when you listen to a recording of your own voice, or you see a video of yourself, and you’re like, “That’s what’s out there?!”
Had you ever acted with yourself before?
Yes, I have, in Season 2 of [the Max series] “Made for Love,” which is rotting in a vault somewhere, much to my chagrin. I don’t know why they won’t put it somewhere. So I’ve acted with myself before. It’s really nuts.
What is that process like? Did you have a preference of how you wanted to go about it?
It’s so technical, which I found equal parts fascinating and infuriating. We worked with a very special type of camera for those scenes, and you have to physically match exactly what you did as the other person, so your brain is hot at the end of the day. It feels like a modem that has to be put on ice. One of the things I love the most about being an actor is interacting with other actors, and seeing where that leads us. Doing that with a memory of what you’ve done a couple hours ago is really strange. It’s a whole different skill, like people who have to act a lot with green screen.
Nanette kills the virtual Robert Daly with his own ceremonial knife through his skull. Did it feel you’d taken the character full circle with that, after Robert tormented her so much in the first episode?
I loved shooting that so much. It touched upon what the first one did, too: You can feel a deep well of empathy for someone, and that doesn’t condone their actions. I think your heart breaks for him in this episode. It’s such a metaphor for capitalism, the way in which he’s sentenced to just create content for all time, and how that makes someone go mad. It’s never enough. He thinks that he deserves to have a companion and, I don’t know, reading that scene, I was so heartbroken. Of course, we all deserve that, and yet to do that to someone against their will — it’s what happened in the first episode. It’s very sort of meta, like, Oh my God, here we go again.
I screamed when the real world Nanette was hit by a car. How did you feel about it?
I loved it, but I’m kind of a sicko with stuff like that. That was also a complicated stunt and camera thing, so we kept having to watch [playback] to make sure that this had worked. Usually, I can’t watch myself. I can’t get near a monitor. I can’t hear playback of my own voice. It just makes me full body cringe. But I was able to watch that back. It horrified me, and made me laugh. I don’t know if it’s supposed to make you laugh, but it is so unexpected and harrowing.
Finally, the ending leaves open a lingering question about what will happen to the Callister crew now that they’re stuck in Nanette’s brain. Do you think a Part 3 is possible?
Well, it depends. Is this a form of her being able to stay captain forever in some weird, twisted way? Does this start to turn her into someone that she doesn’t want to be, where she has control over who’s in her head, and is never fully alone and is able to retain power in some way? It doesn’t seem like she’s working that hard to get them out of there.
Would you do a Part 3?
We haven’t talked about it, but I do trust Charlie’s brain. If he feels there’s another possibility, I would love to talk to him about it.
This interview has been edited and condensed.