A scene in Black Mirror episode Common People was changed, as the actor involved thought it would be “too embarrassing”. He’s admitted he didn’t want to film what was initially in the script, knowing his family would watch the Netflix show.

Common People has been backed as one of the most depressing Black Mirror episodes to date. It follows the story of married couple, Amanda and Mike.

School teacher Amanda was left fighting for her life after a medical emergency. Her desperate husband Mike then signed her up for Rivermind, a high-tech system to keep her alive. But, at what cost? Tied to a subscription model controlled by Rivermind, Amanda’s new lease on life was a financial trap. It all got pretty heartbreaking.

Along the way, we saw Mike go to desperate lengths to keep his wife alive. In order to keep up with subscription fees for the health care, he took every overtime shift his work could give him. But, on top of this, he was signing up to websites on which he’d live stream doing awful things. In return, viewers would pay. On the sites, viewers would request dangerous and wild things for Mike to do on camera, and pay up when he did them.

Scene in Black Mirror season seven episode Common People was changed

via Netflix

Actor Chris O’Dowd, who plays Mike, said one of the website requests that was initially in the script was too embarrassing for him to film. He made sure Black Mirror changed the scene.

He said: “When Charlie (Brooker, the show creator) sent me the script initially, I was like, I’ll do it, but my character gets to a point where he electrocutes his own balls. And I was like, my kids are going to be eight and 11 when this comes out, so I can’t do that. I can’t have them have that as a gif. So that was the only thing that I asked to change.”

So, what was put in its place? The scene where Mike was requested to put a dildo on his finger, and well, you know the rest. Is that less embarrassing? I’m not sure.

“But that’s what we ended up with,” Chris continued. “We have this absolutely horrible email chain where essentially; We’re sending each other options of what the dildo finger could be like based on Google searches. If anybody ever finds that, I mean, that’s it. That’s the end of both of us.”