No one was more surprised by Howard’s casting than herself, who, while promoting the Netflix exclusive anthology series’ third season, showed Conan O’Brien a distressing, tearful video of her describing her first viewing of the show as a “nosedive.”
The potentially detrimental effects of an obsessive abuse of technology are commented on brilliantly in Black Mirror, especially in an episode starring Bryce Dallas Howard as a woman desperate for her peers’ approval in a “utopia” ran on a five-star rating system.
Coincidentally, “Nosedive” is the name of the episode she gives her manic, SAG Award-nominated performance in, which surprisingly did not require her to tap into her earlier “nervous breakdown” to achieve, as a hidden talent of hers could do the trick.