[This story contains spoilers from Black Mirror season seven sequel “USS Callister: Into Infinity.”]

Cristin Milioti had just finished playing Sofia Falcone in The Penguin when she teleported back to the USS Callister spaceship for the Black Mirror sequel, “USS Callister: Into Infinity.”

The new season seven episode — which runs 90 minutes — was conceived by Netflix series creator-writer Charlie Brooker years ago. After first taking format as a spinoff series, the follow-up eventually became the film that is now streaming when plans changed amid the Hollywood strikes in 2023. Director Toby Haynes and nearly all of the cast returned for the sequel, which follows Milioti’s character, Nanette Cole, both in real life and inside Infinity, the immersive video game where she and her crew were unknowingly digitally cloned by the first episode’s villain Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons), the CEO of Infinity.

Of course, the world of her Batman super-villain and her USS Callister hero are quite different. But when she put back on Captain Cole’s space suit (she’s now leading the ship in the sequel), she was once again playing a traumatized character. After escaping Daly, and killing him, in the first saga, Captain Cole and her ship are now trapped in the real game, where they must kill other players for their credits so they can stay alive. If they get killed in the game, they cease to exist, period.

“It is the same soul and consciousness. That clone has all of her memories and experiences baked in there,” says Milioti of why the sequel packs such a punch as it follows in-game Nanette’s plight to save real Nanette after the latter gets hit by a car and put in a coma. When Nanette finally regains consciousness in the outside world — after a thrilling faceoff with a clone of Daly’s (bringing back Plemons) — her digital copy is given life, but the rest of her ship is now trapped inside Nanette’s head. That ending is open for interpretation about where it falls on the bleak Black Mirror scale, but one thing everyone seems to agree on is that it charts course for more “Callister.”

Milioti says Brooker originally wrote a more upbeat ending. “I think he turned the dial up on the dementedness of it, of having them all trapped in her head, which I love,” she says, “because that’s twisted and crazy and so weird.” Below, she talks to The Hollywood Reporter about her jolt from Penguin to Black Mirror, the chaos of acting opposite herself in the “Callister” sequel, and she shares her interpretation of that ending and her hope for a trilogy: “How rare is it that you get to reunite with people seven years later and revisit a thing?”

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I spoke with your “USS Callister: Into Infinity” director Toby Haynes and he said you filmed this sequel pretty quickly after finishing The Penguin. How quickly?

Like two weeks later. So I was in like a little bit of a fugue state when I got there. (Laughs)

I imagine it might take longer than that to cleanse yourself from playing Sofia Falcone?

I don’t know how people do that regularly, and go from shoot to shoot to shoot. I don’t know what that says about me, but I need a little bit of time. But when you’re working on stuff you really love, of course you’re going to be like, “Great, I’ll be there.” But yeah, two weeks was a quick turnaround! We also shot [Black Mirror] in London, so I was also relocating for a while.

Just to get this out of the way, are there any conversations about you revisiting Sofia and The Penguin world, any rumblings about the very desired second season?

I get asked a lot and my answer is always the same — but it is the most genuine answer, which is that I would love nothing more. No conversations as of yet, but I would love it. I had the time of my life, so my answer would be yes.

I feel like I saw a flinch of Sofia at the very end of “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” when you are looking at yourself in the mirror in the hospital.

(Laughs)

Cristin Milioti as the real Nanette in Black Mirror‘s “USS Callister: Into Infinity,” when she goes inside the Infinity game to find her digital clone. Courtesy of Netflix

So you’ve just come out of that very dark world and you come back to the world of “USS Callister,” all these years later, and both versions of your character — the real Nanette Cole and her digital copy in the Infinity game — are pretty traumatized.

Yep, they are.

I understand that you filmed this sequel by going back and forth between the versions of your character, and not in any sort of block filming with one of your versions. What was that like?

It was nuts. (Laughs) I can’t speak for everyone, but I think people would identify with how making anything is crazy. It’s a miracle that anything gets made or comes together, and you do all kind of enter this fever state. The days are so long and they’re always so crazy, and you never have enough days for what you actually want to shoot.

Making this felt like that feeling on steroids, where it was running back and forth between different costumes. I don’t know if Toby told you this, but we shot a lot of it with a very specialized camera where you had to move exactly the same way from what you had done that morning, even though you were a completely different character. You had to remember every eyeline and movement. It was so fascinating and challenging. But it certainly added to the chaos of it all. Sometimes maybe that helps, that it’s in the fabric of the thing you’re making. But it was head-spinning!

Who were you acting opposite from when you were acting with yourself?

Sometimes I had a stand in. I had a double, who was so lovely, and then sometimes I couldn’t do it with her because of this camera. So I’d have that for some of the time, to get the physicality, and then sometimes it was just me alone in a space looking at different dots all over set and trying to remember the exact cadence of, “Ok, I think we” — “we” being myself and I (laughs) — “took a beat here.” It was really wild. It was mind-blowing. [Off camera], those scenes were a lot of me standing in a spacesuit being like, “Sorry!” for three days (laughs).

Milioti with Jimmi Simpson as Walton inside the game. Nick Wall/Netflix

When you finished the first “USS Callister,” which aired back in 2017, Toby (who directed both sagas) said he started pitching Charlie Brooker immediately on ideas to spinoff that episode. He told me in our conversation about the sequel that this was going to very seriously be a series at one point. Are you happy that it was a film instead of a series? Do you think it works better this way?

It’s hard to know because I know all of Charlie [Brooker]’s ideas over the years. They were completely different each time and all of them were so good. I do think I like the efficiency of one. Of course it’s so great to get to explore all that [in a series], but I like that they all match. The first one was an hour and a half. This one is an hour and a half. It feels like a revisitation also in form, which I really like.

Toby did describe this sequel saying he’s hoping for a trilogy. When I spoke to Charlie, he also expressed interest in writing for these characters again. Did you go into this thinking “Into Infinity” is the middle of the story?

No, I didn’t. I know the ending is a little ambiguous as to what could happen, but I treated it, especially for Nanette, that she’s out. She got out. I know this is dark and demented, but when she gets hit by that car [in the real world], that was so much fun to film. We had such an incredible stunt coordinator and stunt team, and filming that, we could watch it back each time to see if it worked properly — it was a very complicated camera move. We just got to do so much cool stuff on this one, so maybe a third one [would be great].

I shrieked when you [Nanette outside version] got hit by the car, it was so violent.

With the camera crew, hair and makeup, and the stunt team, we all watched playback, because we were trying to figure out if it worked. Every time we played it back, everyone would be like, “Oooohhhhh!” We were all giggling, too.

Milioti as Captain Nanette Cole in the sequel. Nick Wall/Netflix

Jesse Plemons returns for the sequel; his casting was kept secret. Toby called your scenes with Jesse a masterclass in acting. He also brought up how much you each have done as actors in the years between the “Callister” episodes. Now, you return in a flipped narrative, where Nanette goes into the scene knowing more than Daly, yet he still has all the power. What took the most work for you two to land both the fear and heart in those scenes?

It was so wonderful to be back with Jesse. I love acting with him. This is our third time acting together [also in Fargo season two], and he’s so wonderful to work with. We didn’t discuss much, we kind of just dove in. But I can speak for myself that the thing I tried to keep an eye on the most was calibrating how held Nanette has to be; she wants to unleash and she can’t. She has to play it so smart and she’s also terrified because she’s face to face with the person who has ruined her life, and she has to put on this facade — and also get out of the situation with the information she needs. That’s so fun and rich to play with as an actor, but I wanted to make sure that I calibrated that correctly. It felt like doing a play, because it was just us in that little garage for days. That garage was as claustrophobic as it looks.

You also make interesting choices in the end. Your space crew is now stuck inside of your head, but Nanette seems like she’s not in a rush to figure out how to get them out. Can you talk about that?

That was all in Charlie’s script, but I maybe pushed the gas on it a little bit. Because I was like, “I wonder how ready she is to let go of her position as captain?” Especially being grateful that she’s returned to her life — but still having to return to her life. Something I found in this sequel is that it’s a little bit of: wherever you go, there you are. She enters this world as a captain and was doing so well, and now is failing. And she’s failing in the real world, too. Obviously her circumstances affect her, but I wonder if she’s willing to give up what power she’s now accrued.

Milioti with her “USS Callister: Into Infinity” crew, played by (left to right) Billy Magnussen, Osy Ikhile, Paul G. Raymond and Milanka Brooks. Nick Wall/Netflix

Charlie spoke with me about reclaiming the Black Mirror narrative after people last season were calling it the “bad technology show.” He’s like: No, it’s the bad humanity show — humans make the bad choices.

(Laughs) Yes, it is.

Here, Nanette makes the right choice when Daly asks her about saving herself or saving her ship, but it’s her clone that makes that choice. So does that count as a win for humanity in Black Mirror universe?

I don’t know. I mean, it’s so head-spinning. I think so, because essentially it is the same soul and consciousness. That clone has all of her memories and experiences baked in there. But I think she’s also been through war for the last couple months. Shooting people and getting almost killed, and seeing a fellow crew member [which explained the absence of original star Michaela Coel] getting killed. So it’s not just going to be like, “And now I’m working in the office and back to hanging out.” It’s going to be tough [in the real world]. And she has a spaceship in her head!

Toby said you had a lot of conversations about that ending, and that Charlie initially wrote it more straight-forward. Then he rewrote it to be more ambiguous.

Yes, there were discussions. I think originally it had a happier ending.

I thought this was happy for Black Mirror!

I know. I think he turned the dial up on the dementedness of it, of having them all trapped in her head, which I love, because that’s twisted and crazy and so weird. I think before it had been more cut and dry.

It sounds like you all are on board to do more. So… a trilogy?

It really was very special to all get to see each other again. I don’t want to speak for everyone, but from our discussions about it, it was such a golden experience for everyone. How rare is it that you get to reunite with people seven years later and revisit a thing? It’s just very cool.

Would you hope there would be less time before the next one?

Yeah, I don’t want to wait seven years for anything. Also, we’re all going to start to look very different! It might be hard to keep going, “A week later…” if all of us look older.

What would delight you most about exploring life for Nanette with a spaceship in her head?

I don’t know why this is coming to mind, but that they’re [her crew] controlling different parts of her body. That would be fun to have someone control my arm against my will so I can do some ridiculous slapstick routine at work. I don’t know how feasible that is! But it could turn into an action sequence where all of your limbs are doing different things. (Laughs)

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Black Mirror season seven is now streaming all episodes on Netflix. Read THR’s season seven interviews with Charlie Brooker and Jessica Rhoades, Rosy McEwen, Toby Haynes and check out our series ranking of all the episodes.