Inside Black Mirror

by Charlie Brooker

I think it’s fair to say Jesse wanted to pay homage to Shatner’s Captain Kirk. It absolutely wasn’t in the script. He worked with a vocal coach for a few weeks to find the right cadence and watched a lot of Star Trek. I think he was even listening to audio clips of Shatner on set in between takes. I remember Jesse telling us that Shatner was a Shakespearean-trained actor and that he treated the Star Trek scripts as if they’re Shakespeare. Shatner took it all very seriously and very theatrically, and you could definitely see Jesse channelling that in Space Fleet mode. Jesse was incredibly generous and would say things to Toby like, “If you ever need me to turn up the Shatner, I can do that for you.”