How to Get Cast on ‘Black Mirror’

Black Mirror is an anthology series, which means each episode tells its own self-contained story, and viewers can watch them in whatever order they choose. Each series contains between three and six episodes, lasting between 40 and 90 minutes. The episodes typically have a dystopian crux, and often imagine a fallout involving our human dependence on technology, like Series 7’s harrowing “Common People,” in which Mike (Chris O’Dowd) resorts to live-streaming himself doing painful stunts for money in order to keep up with an ever-rising subscription fee for the technology keeping his partner, Amanda (Rashida Jones), alive. Some of its tales, such as Series 4’s spaceship-set “USS Callister,” veer into sci-fi.

Further memorable episodes include Series 2’s “Be Right Back,” in which Martha (Hayley Atwell) purchases an AI reincarnation of her partner Ash (Domhnall Gleeson) after he’s killed in a car accident, and Series 3’s “San Junipero,” which is set in a simulated reality in which the deceased and the elderly can interact through their younger bodies. 

A number of big name actors have starred in Black Mirror – Jodie Whittaker, Chris O’Dowd, Andrew Scott, Emma Corrin, Daniel Kaluuya, Awkwafina, and Harriet Walter among them. Most have played characters, but Salma Hayek played a fictionalised version of herself in Series 6’s “Joan is Awful” and there were shades of the real Miley Cyrus in the popstar she played in Series 5’s “Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too.” But for all its celebrity casting, Brooker is committed to hiring jobbing actors too. That means plenty of opportunities to get cast, if only in a minor role.

There have been six casting directors on the show over the years: Shaheen Baig (2011 to 2014), Jina Jay (2016 to 2025), Henry Russell Bergstein (2017), Jeanie Bacharach (2023 to 2025), Corinne Clark (2025), and Jennifer Page (2025). 

With 26 episodes under her belt and a decade on the show, Jay is the longest serving casting director, and may well cast the eighth series if it gets greenlit.

On any project, Jay says, the casting director “start[s] right at the very beginning once the script is there – sometimes even without the script because the source material is a novel or something like that.” How projects get cast is different every time. “Each job is like starting from scratch.… It’s a different script, a different director, and, even if you’ve worked with the director several times before, the material is always going to be different.”

Some elements of the process, however, remain the same. “You read the script, probably breaking it down in your head, certainly in relation to lead roles,” Jay says. “Without the casting of either one or multiple lead roles…the film doesn’t get what we call ‘greenlit’.”

In addition to discussing ambition and visions for the project with the director, Jay says the casting director is “identifying the lead roles, [while] your office behind you is immediately identifying supporting roles. Even the smallest roles that maybe don’t have dialogue, but you realise their presence in a scene is integral, is important, so you’ll do those roles too.” With shows like Black Mirror, on which a lot of stars are cast, “up front we’re focusing on lead casting to unlock the production.”

Baig, who also cast Peaky Blinders, says that “in television sometimes a casting director can be brought on before a director.”

At the time of writing, Netflix has not yet confirmed Season 8 of the show. “I’ll keep doing this until people get sick of it. Or me,” Brooker told the Radio Times. “Or if the world suddenly, overnight, completely improves into a utopia and we have no need for this kind of entertainment anymore, because we’re all so happy out in the wild, patting unicorns on the head.”

He also told the Hollywood Reporter that “there are some stories that are pretty much fully baked and ready to go.” 

So for actors hoping to be cast in the show, it sounds like there’s time yet.

Black Mirror isn’t currently casting, but you can use this time to ensure that your acting materials are up to date, including your CV, headshots, and showreel. You’ll also want to secure an agent who can help you get inside the audition room. Be sure to read our guide to auditioning for Netflix so you know what to expect, and check out these TV dramas currently casting to tide you over in the meantime.

Bacharach, who has cast four episodes of the show since 2023, told Backstage that auditioning actors should “be prepared, do the homework going into the room, and think about going into that audition to win the room and not the role. Only one person can get the job, but a CD isn’t only ever casting just that role; they’re casting parts they don’t even know exist yet. Trust that if you’ve done great work, the CD is going to remember you for other things.”

Jay acknowledges that the audition room “is a really vulnerable space for actors” to enter, given nine out of 10 won’t get the job. But for those lucky enough to land parts, she promises she “works very hard…emotionally to ensure [that for] actors coming onto set…everything feels fair.”