This Black Mirror Episode Had An On-Set Injury That You Can See Yourself

If you go all the way back to the beginning of "Black Mirror" — specifically during those first two short seasons, before it moved to Netflix from England's Channel 4 — you might spot a familiar face in the anthology series' second-ever episode, "Fifteen Million Merits." Written by showrunner and creator Charlie Brooker alongside his wife Kanak Huq and directed by Euros Lyn ("Doctor Who," "Sherlock"), the hour-long episode focuses on a world powered by exercise bikes ... or, specifically, by the people forced to ride them to provide said power. The longer you spend on an exercise bike, the more "merits" you win before returning, each day, to a tiny cubicle-sized room that has screens instead of walls, showing ads in between videos and games. As for the merits, they fund one's entire life in this dystopian hellscape.

Our protagonist Bing, played by acclaimed actor Daniel Kaluuya, is one of the bike riders who, one day, overhears a fellow rider singing in the shared bathroom. The rider, Abi Khan ("Downton Abbey" star Jessica Brown Findlay), has a gorgeous voice, so Bing encourages her to enter the in-universe version of "American Idol," called "Hot Shot" — largely because the person who goes on to win that show gets to live elsewhere and in total luxury, forsaking their life of constant bike riding. "Hot Shot" requires a whopping 15 million merits to enter, but Bing, who inherited merits from his brother when he died, donates them, only to watch as Abi is deemed an "average" singer and instead offered a job on an adult entertainment channel. 

This brings about Bing's mental breakdown, which Kaluuya performs stunningly ... and according to the 2018 book "Inside Black Mirror" by Brooker, executive producer Annabel Jones, and Jason Arnopp, an injury Bing sustains while he's furiously thrashing around in his room isn't just totally real; it's in the episode. "Bing's room was shockingly small when you actually saw it," Brooker said while referring to the set that served as the tiny room. "When Daniel was smashing up the room, he put his foot through the screen at one point, by accident, and I think cut his foot quite badly. We left it in." Clearly, Kaluuya is dedicated to his art, for better or for worse ... but the team behind the episode also said they knew they needed to cast Kaluuya as Bing as soon as he auditioned.

As casting director Shaheen Baig said in "Inside Black Mirror," Daniel Kaluuya absolutely crushed his audition for the episode, and that sort of sentiment is going to become a bit of a pattern in this article. "Daniel's audition was extraordinary," Baig recalled. "That kind of performance means there's only one person for that part."

From there, director Euros Lyn said that she and Kaluuya spent quite a lot of time building out Bing's entire story, from the loss of his brother to his feelings about his entire situation working as a bike rider hunting for merits every day. "In rehearsals, Daniel and I worked a lot on his back story," Lyn said. "Bing mentions his brother who died, and so we talked about their relationship, and this terrible sadness and grief he carried with him. So all that stuff isn't explored in talky dialogue scenes, but it's all there and he's feeling it all the time. That, in part, is why Daniel's performance is so fantastic. And his timing is brilliant. He does this thing where a thought drops in his mind, and he does the slightest twitch of his eye. It's so witty and warm and revealing of what's going on inside."

Frankly, Lyn and Kaluuya absolutely nailed this, because for a large part of the episode (Kaluuya spends a lot of time alone on screen), Bing is silent and merely conveys his mild displeasure, exhaustion, or overall misery with a small glance or, as Lyn noted, a "twitch." The quiet part of Kaluuya's performance is also what makes Bing's outburst, directed at the figures who run the system, particularly remarkable ... and a future Oscar-winning screenwriter and director thought so too, because this episode of "Black Mirror" convinced him that Kaluuya was right for his movie.

If you don't recognize Danie Kaluuya from "Black Mirror," you probably remember him from Jordan Peele's blockbuster directorial debut "Get Out," which changed the game by spawning a whole spate of social thrillers in its wake and even encouraging college professors to build courses around the film. Kaluuya plays Chris, a guy who visits his white girlfriend's family home only to discover a house of unexpected horrors. So how did Peele find him?

"It was 'Black Mirror,' Peele told Deadline in 2018 when he and Kaluuya discussed the film together. "I had this immediate feeling of, how is this guy so good and I haven't seen his work before? The way I can best describe it is, he showed the full range of the two opposite sides of Chris. Different characters, different emotions. The character goes from being quiet, introspective, subdued, with a relatable sense of compliance to the system, and then by the end he explodes and is primal. In the 'Black Mirror' episode, he showed it in just monologue, this primal, frugal, passionate monologue that just feels like a Greek tragedy. And so I knew I needed somebody who could do both of those things, and either one of those, he does better than anyone else."

Peele said that while he personally knew Kaluuya was the man for the role, he needed to bring him in to audition anyway, and he performed the now-famous "hypnosis scene." According to Peele, it was unbelievable. "It was a beautiful moment, it was undeniable," he recalled. "You could see he doesn't do anything for the sake of doing something. His specificity in what he chooses to do, you could tell he was into some good, interesting s***. One of the things that really stood out to me was, he understood the risk of 'Get Out' and instead of it pushing him away, it drew him closer. I felt like we had this bond of like, holy s***, they're going to let us make this movie? We're going to do things you're not supposed to do in this movie and it could go very wrong."

The rest is literally cinematic history, and it's safe to say that nothing went wrong once Peele and Kaluuya teamed up. Not only did the film score Oscar nominations for Kaluuya, the overall film, and nods for Peele for directing and writing (the latter of which he won in the Best Original Screenplay category), the actor and writer/director reunited in 2022 for "Nope" to create even more movie magic. It's lucky, then, that Kaluuya booked this role in "Black Mirror," or we may never have gotten his performance in "Get Out."