Fearne Cotton’s new fiction book sounds a little bit familiar, and we’re very excited for it (Picture: Fearne Cotton/Instagram)
Okay, okay. We know Black Mirror episodes are supposed to reflect our reality, bring to light scary possible future scenarios, and generally freak us out – but this is genuinely quite weird.
Season six of the hit show aired not long ago, and fans have been going wild over episode one, called Joan is Awful.
In it Joan – played by Annie Murphy – is appalled when she turns on, er, Streamberry (aka, Netflix) and finds a protagonist played by Salma Hayek with her hair, name, and life playing out on screen.
Gulp, indeed. What transpires is a hectic show, which we won’t spoil for you.
So some people were pretty shocked when Fearne Cotton – yes, the real one – took to social media to announce the arrival of her first novel, Scripted, which will be out in June next year.
A few of Fearne’s fans leapt to compare her concept to the Black Mirror episode in the comments section of her video, as one wrote: ‘Watch black mirror joan is awful its kind of like this.’ [sic]
Another said: ‘Have you seen the first episode of Black mirror? It’s called Jane is awful and it’s a very similar story as Scripted which I cannot wait to read by the way!’
‘Love this – very Black Mirror, which is right up my street!’ commented someone else.
‘I’ve written a hell of a lot of non-fiction but I’ve been really excited by the idea of fiction,’ Fearne said in the self-facing video.
Fearne’s book Scripted is out in June 2024 (Picture: Fearne Cotton/Instagram)
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‘I kind of had this idea land in my head out of the blue, it was really strange,’ said Fearne, before she went on to explain the general blurb of the book.
The Happy Place podcaster’s blurb started off fairly normal with a woman in her early 30s who has lost her voice (metaphorically, not physically) and wants to get it back.
‘She’s got a job that she loves, she’s got great friends, but there are other characters in her life that are problematic,’ explained Fearne.
‘Her mum, her dad, her sister, her boss at work, her boyfriend. They all have really challenging qualities, and whenever she’s faced with one of these people and a dilemma she tends to go silent.’
And how does Joan is Awful start? With a disillusioned 30-something who has lost her voice and direction, and who is tempted to have an affair to carve her own path and rid herself of a drab boyfriend.
Black Mirror sees Joan go spare after her life is randomly played out on TV (Picture: Nick Wall/Netflix)
Salma Hayek plays ‘awful’ on-screen Joan (Picture: Ana Blumekron/Netflix)
Okay, okay, this isn’t that strange. But call this Freaky Friday because things are about to get weird.
Full disclaimer: Fearne started writing the book around a year and a half ago, by the way, long before Joan Is Awful aired on our TV screens. So it’s not a case of copying, but one of that old proverb ‘great minds’.
Continuing, Fearne explained what she calls the ‘weird’ part of her debut novel, seemingly unaware how eerily strange how totally familiar it actually is.
‘Here’s the weird bit of the book,’ she began. ‘When Jade is out running one day she stumbles across a wad of paper, and intrigued, she picks up this wad of paper, and sneakily takes a look.’
Could this be… Streamberry on paper?
She continued: ‘Then she sees more closely that her name is in the script, so she’s obviously really freaked out. Then she sees her boyfriend’s name in the script, and she’s very, very, freaked out.
‘So she reads through this first script, and this is a scene from her life that has not happened but feels very familiar of the dynamic between her and her boyfriend Adam.’
Of course, Fearne started writing her debut novel over a year ago, so had never seen Joan is Awful (Picture: Netflix)
The Black Mirror episode has a hero’s ending, and we hope Scripted will too (Picture: Netflix)
Just like Joan, Jade (weird they both begin with J) is understandably freaked out.
‘Anyway, it transpires a few hours later in the day that exact scene unfurls,’ revealed Fearne, ‘and she has that exact scripted dynamic come to life a little later on in the day with her boyfriend.’
Um. Ok. So, like, er Joan is Awful? You know, the bit – we mean the whole episode – where Joan’s real life unfurls on screen?
Aside from what are sure to be many differences, the main one here is that in Black Mirror Joan’s life is aired after it’s happened in real time, whereas Jade’s life is foretold in the scripts.
But it’s the same realm of wacky idea, and we love Fearne and Black Mirror writer Charlie Brooker for it.
With further explanation, Fearne added: ‘So throughout the book when there’s all sorts of drama and different circumstances for Jade to navigate, she keeps seeing these scripts turn up in the weirdest of places, and each one of them depicts a scene with one of these tricky people in her life, that sits in the future.’
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While Black Mirror is a cautionary tale against signing terms and conditions willy-nilly, with also a heavy hint of a hero, coming-of-age arc, Scripted sounds like it will be similar to the latter.
And while on-screen Joan, played by Salma, depicts ‘real life’ Joan as, well, awful, it appears Fearne’s character Jade is going to realise how silent she’s become in the process of seeing her life from an outsider’s perspective.
‘So you can imagine what happens,’ added Fearne (um, yes, we can actually!).
‘Throughout the book Jade starts to get a sense of how little she’s saying in these dynamics or how she’s not saying what she really wants.
‘So you will witness Jade go through this beautiful journey of finding her voice and feeling courageous enough to use it, an d all sorts of wonderful things happen.’
Sounds like an ending we’ve already seen somewhere, in the shape of actor Annie smashing Salma’s ‘awful’ Joan into metaphorical smithereens.
Clearly, Fearne has hit on something promising here if the success of Black Mirror is anything to go by.
We’re super excited to read it, and Fearne is buzzing to be able to put it out into the world.
‘It felt like a very sort of personal experience, but I am so excited to get it out there,’ she concluded.
Yikes! It’s a Black Mirror moment about Black Mirror. We’re now just confused.
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It’s pretty freaky, folks.
