Rashida Jones: 'Black Mirror' episode reflects bleak intersection of healthcare, capitalism

NEW YORK, April 10 (UPI) -- Parks and Recreation and The Office alum Rashida Jones says the extraordinary-seeming circumstances of her Black Mirror healthcare horror story are chillingly close to reality.

In the Season 7 episode "Common People," premiering Thursday on Netflix, Jones plays Amanda, a teacher whose happy, fulfilling life is prolonged, yet diminished by an expensive, experimental, high-tech treatment for brain cancer.

Chris O'Dowd plays Amanda's loving husband Mike, a construction worker who picks up every shift he can to pay for her costly care, while Tracee Ellis Ross plays Gaynor, the smooth-talking Rivermind representative who gets them to sign on the dotted line.

"That's the trajectory of capitalism," Jones, 49, told UPI in a round-table interview with reporters Wednesday.

"Things are out of reach and then they're made accessible," she said. "It's like, 'We're going to do this tiering system and we're trying to figure out how to turn a profit,' while these people's lives are literally at stake."

Jones noted that even if the fictional Rivermind was successful and had loads of people paying for their services, there would likely still be levels of care patients could receive depending on how much money they had.

"You can imagine this future of Rivermind where there is this massive accessibility and they still have tiers, and there's all of these things that are possible, like living forever and being young forever and at the very end of one thing and then the kind of basic things, like just keeping people alive, in any kind of coverage zone," Jones said.

"That's probably where they're headed to, but just to see the kind of machinations of capitalism as things are building and that coming face-to-face with somebody's literal life being at stake, that's so dark when you think about it."

Jones gave as an example of corporate greed at the expense of public health the 1999 fact-based film, The Insider, which was about tobacco industry whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand.

"Companies decide how many people can die from their product and what makes it worth it to them. They'll do the payouts after they're dead," she said. "It's still worth it to develop that product. I feel like this is sort of tapping into that, the sort of cynicism around how we're developing."

Ross, 52, added, "And where those lines of ethics are and who makes those lines."

"I think those are the questions that this episode really asks of people," she said.

"There's quite a few different questions, but capitalism is a big part of it and then what happens when technology and science and medicine all kind of get to this place where people are not even given a chance to decide," Ross said. "Because, of course, you would get [the life-saving treatment] and not look at what the repercussions of it are."

Jones said she jumped at the chance to return to the Black Mirror franchise for "Common People" after she had a positive experience penning the anthology series' 2016 episode "Nosedive."

"I'm never saying 'no' to Black Mirror," Jones said.

"Charlie [Brooker] knows that," she added. "This felt like it really had that classic Black Mirror flavor, tonally."

Jones said she was a fan of the show right from the start because it straddles comedy and darkness.

"I would just do anything to be in this universe, but this episode, in particular," said the daughter of late music producing legend Quincy Jones.

"I felt well-suited for this part because I, too, kind of straddle the line. I've been doing kind of more sci-fi, bleak things in the past couple years, so it's the right timing for me as an actor to blend the two things."

Ross, who is best known for her comedic performance in Black-ish, said she enjoyed having the chance to play a woman who is both a victim and someone who is complicit with an exploitative system.

"That's what I found really interesting about her. Her vulnerability was also preyed on and then she became a perpetrator in that same system, which is part of life and we know happens in different places," Ross said, referring to how Gaynor survived an accident only by becoming one of Rivermind's first patients.

"She is a representation of greed and capitalism and all those things, but she's also somebody trying to make sense of it herself and I think it leaves the audience the space to kind of plug in what they will and see her as a villain or just see the system as the villain and capitalism and greed or technology as the bad guy."