Miley Cyrus’s Reason For Doing Black Mirror Says A Lot About The Music Industry

Miley Cyrus as Ashley O on Black Mirror

The 5th season of Black Mirror is out on June 5th, with the hugely anticipated series starring lots of big names. Fleabag’s Andrew Scott, Anthony Mackie aka The Falcon from Avengers: Endgame and of course Miley Cyrus.

The Black Mirror writers Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones recently revealed that they didn’t think she’d take the part, and that they didn’t specifically have her in mind for the episode. But sadly for her, there was plenty of aspects of the dystopian show that she could relate too.

The episode, called Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, sees Miley playing massive popstar Ashley O who releases an AI version of herself.

“She read the script and, as you can imagine, there were quite a few things in the script that she could identify with,” Annabel Jones said at a press screening of the episode.

The Malibu singer’s time on The Disney Channel gave her plenty of experience in being manufactured in a certain way.

“She’s got a very sarcastic sense of humour – she’s very acerbic and very funny. And she delights in subverting things. Her whole career has been about the Disney popstar who tries to carve out her own identity and as a result she has faced a lot of opposition from her label and her fans. So, she’s been on that journey and she said, ‘We’re going to have a lot of fun with this’.”

Brooker added that she said “Oh it will piss people off and pissing people off is kind of my thing.”

The singer could relate to the AI aspect after she performed with a band whose fans were not hooked to their phones.

“She made an appearance on stage with some act that was aimed at an older generation. I don’t know who it was, like The Grateful Dead, or a band like that of a different era,” Charlie recalled.

“And she went on stage and looked out at this massive auditorium and no one was filming it on a phone and they were all looking at her – and she hadn’t seen that for like ten years. A sea of human faces, that affected her quite a bit.”

Annabel added: “She was saying, ‘Does it matter if I’m on stage or if a hologram is on stage?’ No one is looking’.” Jones continued: “Things are going on in her industry that she’s very aware of.”

Check out the trailer below.

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