(Warning: This post contains spoilers for the “Black Mirror” Season 5 episode “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too.”)
Miley Cyrus is possibly the biggest star to appear on Netflix’s “Black Mirror” — so far. And it’s for that very reason that showrunners Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones didn’t actually think they’d land her to play pop star Ashley O on the Season 5 episode “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too.” But she was their dream get.
“I think we were sort of amusing ourselves with the idea that Miley would be the perfect person for that role, but with just us sort of torturing each other because we never thought that would happen, obviously, because it’s Miley Cyrus,” Jones told TheWrap in an interview you can watch above.
“And then I don’t know whether we’d said it so many times we sort of thought, well, why don’t we just ask? What’s there to lose, apart from pride?” Jones continued. “And so we sent the script off to her and within a day or two she’d read the script and committed to the project and it was all suddenly happening. So we had no real time to sort of react.”
Jones told us she’s happy Cyrus agreed to play the “On a Roll” singer, as she brings a “real, raw vulnerability” to the part that fans may not have been expecting because her usual attitude is “so punky.”
Now, if you’re a fan of Ashley O’s music — which is comprised of reworked versions of Nine Inch Nails songs, like “Head Like a Hole” — you can probably start to get your hopes up, as Cyrus hinted after “Black Mirror” Season 5 launched last Wednesday that full versions of those tracks are “coming.”
But Jones and Brooker couldn’t tell TheWrap definitively if and when the songs will drop.
“It would be great if we released the songs, but obviously–” Jones said, with Brooker adding: “That’s in the hands of the gods, or record labels.”
“Or God, otherwise known as Miley Cyrus,” Jones said. “Yeah, if Miley wanted to release them that would be hilarious because they are great songs, there is no snobbery about them… There is no snobbery about pop music, it’s just that Ashley O wants to create a different identity and a different style of music in the film.”
Watch the full interview above, in which Brooker and Jones also tells us about the “over-the-top s–t” and props Cyrus offered to the production.
“Black Mirror” Season 5 is now streaming on Netflix.