Black Mirror S6: Is Joan is Awful based on a true story?

With Black Mirror Season 6 now streaming on Netflix, fans have wondered if the first episode, ‘Joan is Awful,’ is based on a true story.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, then you’re aware of the fact that Black Mirror, Netflix‘s meta, mind-bending show, has just dropped its sixth season.

The season follows five different stories that range from horrific to terrifying to outright outrageous and hard to wrap your mind around.

However, fans have started speculating if the season’s first episode, ‘Joan is Awful,’ is based on a true story or not.

Is ‘Joan is Awful’ based on a true story?

The first episode of Black Mirror Season 6, ‘Joan is Awful,’ is not based on a true story, but takes inspiration from real life events.

For the uninitiated, the episode follows Joan, a manager of a media company who discovers that her life is being used as the plot of a popular streaming series. The show captures the most private moments of her life: Kissing her ex-boyfriend while in a relationship, firing an employee, etc.

It’s a dark look into being surveilled all the time through your electronic devices and how being the “main character” could be damaging to your real life.

Netflix

During an interview with the Metro, Charlie Booker, Black Mirror’s creator, revealed that the episode was inspired by the scandal surrounding Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced former CEO of Theranos (a blood testing start-up based in Silicon Valley) who was convicted on four out of 11 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy, and sentenced to more than 11 years in prison.

Booker explained: “I was watching The Dropout, which is the dramatisation of Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos story, with my wife, and we were sort of commenting on like, ‘This feels like it happened yesterday, and here it is already a drama on TV.'”

Booker and his team then combined the Holmes idea with the concept of “an average woman who finds herself on the front page of the newspaper” along with “fake AI generated imagery being streamed by a news network.” And then boom, ‘Joan is Awful’ was born.

Black Mirror Season 6 is now streaming on Netflix. You can check out our other coverage in the hubs below:

Black Mirror S6 review | ‘Joan is Awful’ explained | ‘Loch Henry’ explained | ‘Beyond the Sea’ explained | ‘Mazey Day’ explained | ‘Demon 79’ explained