JESSE ARMSTRONG

SELECTED SCREEN CREDITS: Peep Show (2003–15), The Thick of It (2005-12), In the Loop (2009), Four Lions (2010), Fresh Meat (2011-16), Black Mirror (2011), Succession (2018-23), Mountainhead (2025)

“What I love about her as an actor is her humanity,” says Oscar nominee and seven-time Emmy winner Jesse Armstrong. “Her artistry is bringing out very human qualities – whether she’s playing a sort of archetypal role like Doctor Who, or a Ffion Foxwell…”

Jesse’s talking, of course, about Jodie, who played Ffion in his 2011 Black Mirror episode, The Entire History of You – which remains the only instalment of Charlie Brooker’s Channel 4/Netflix sci-fi anthology that wasn’t written (or co-written) by the show’s creator.

“As a writer, I tend towards argument plays and shows,” continues Jesse, “where there’s a proposition buried in the situation. But the danger is, if you’re not careful, you could end up with mouthpieces rather than characters.” The antidote, he explains, is casting. “You look for people who can’t help but bring a part alive, you know? – who hint at a hinterland, a life before the point you meet them on screen. Jodie and Toby [Kebbell, who plays Ffion’s husband, Liam] are exactly those actors. They make you feel the relationship, not just the argument.” He smiles. “That’s a long way of saying she’s a brilliant actor. Jodie’s mix of emotional availability, toughness, and vulnerability means she can suggest a breadth of life behind the role.”

By 2011, Jodie was already working steadily across stage and screen, but that was the year it all snapped into focus. Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block landed in cinemas, Black Mirror launched on Channel 4, and suddenly Jodie – starring in both – was being noticed for her ability to ground outlandish premises with emotional truth. To Jodie, The Entire History of You was never really about the sci-fi: “it’s a relationship drama,” she insists later this issue.