🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐
Let’s travel back to the time of iPod Nanos and Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus, Take the Wheel” to meet paparazzi-hounded superstar Mazey Day.
“The story is set before everyone has a camera in their phone, and there is a crueler attitude toward people in the public eye,” writer and creator Charlie Brooker told Netflix in April about “Mazey Day,” the fourth episode of Black Mirror Season 6.
We’re back to circa 2006 — when tabloid culture was thriving — and the unfortunate star in every paparazzo’s viewfinder is Mazey Day (Clara Rugaard), a young actor who has gone into hiding after an epic meltdown on set. Disaffected pap Bo (Zazie Beetz) wants out of the job, but she’s pulled back in for one last major payday if she can track Mazey down.
But when Bo trails Mazey to a secluded rehab center called Cedarwood Retreat, she finds a much bigger scoop than expected. Read on for more about Mazey’s dramatic demise.
When Bo and her fellow paps Hector (Danny Ramirez), Whitty (Robbie Tann) and Duke (James P. Rees) break into Mazey’s cabin, they find her chained to the floor with a couple of sheep nearby. While the others start clicking away, Bo attempts to break Mazey free, but the actor warns them all to run away from her. When the full moon pokes out from behind the clouds, Mazey suffers a shocking transformation.
“I worked with a movement coach — we created a choreography together,” Rugaard tells Tudum about performing the metamorphosis. “A lot of it was physical and mental labor, and I had to do it in front of [the cast and crew], which was interesting. I guess there was no way that I could hold onto any inhibitions. I had to just fall.”
Adds Ramirez, “They hired the perfect [actor] to be able to do this based on [her] shoulder flexibility, and [she’s] able to, what seems to be like, dislocate them. Even if someone else had the same movement coach, they wouldn’t have been able to get the same kind of…”
“Contortion,” supplies Rugaard.
After mauling Whitty and Duke, the dramatically changed Mazey then breaks out of the facility and kills an unlucky motorist as a wild chase to the diner ensues. Inside the diner, Mazey proceeds to munch on a couple of patrons, Sheriff Ritman (Corey Johnson) and Hector. In the melee, Mazey attacks the sheriff and he accidentally shoots the friendly waiter who had earlier given Bo the tip about Cedarwood. The sheriff drops the gun and Bo picks it up.
Throughout the episode, Bo seems more principled than the other paparazzi — she displays visible guilt about hunting celebs, although she’s definitely not innocent: One of her subjects killed himself after being exposed by one of her photos. In the Cedarwood cabin, however, Bo is more concerned with trying to help Mazey than getting what’s sure to be a bombshell photo.
In the diner, Bo shoots Mazey and the actor reverts to her former self, but Bo doesn’t finish her off. Instead, Bo gives the gun to a bleeding Mazey so she can put herself out of her misery. As she does so, Bo raises her camera to snap one last pic. Mazey makes eye contact with Bo and seems to nod as she puts the gun to her head, as if she wants to help Bo get her money shot. “It was almost an, ‘I’m sorry for killing [your] friend,’ ” says Beetz.
The camera pulls away, and the sound of a gunshot comes from the diner. Most likely, Mazey shot herself. Perhaps she turned the gun around and shot Bo. We’re left not knowing whether Bo sold the photo or not, but if she did, we imagine she got a hell of a lot more than the $30,000 she was anticipating. “I think it would definitely be millions of dollars,” Beetz tells Tudum.
Anything could have happened in that diner, but remember, it’s up to you to picture the final frame.
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