Aaron Paul and I almost miss each other. He’s in New Zealand, shooting a “brutal” new sci-fi horror, while I’m in London, blissfully asleep, my alarm accidentally on silent. By some miracle I wake up just in time. He logs on 20 minutes later, profusely apologetic. “Let me start by saying, I am so sorry,” he says, his trademark easy LA-ish drawl reverberating through the laptop speakers. “I didn’t realise there was a link that I was supposed to click … ”
Turns out Paul isn’t particularly in tune with technology – ironic, or perhaps apt, considering what we’re here to discuss: his starring role in Beyond the Sea, a new Black Mirror episode from season six, released earlier this week. Over the past decade, the splashy hit show has become notorious for its profound, satirical commentary on the frightening repercussions of imaginary (though often startlingly prophetic) technological advances. “Watching Black Mirror has really encouraged me to put my phone down,” Paul says, before apologising again. “I haven’t owned a computer in over 12 years. I never look at my email. I honestly just assumed that my phone was going to ring at 7pm my time.”
He’s not a total technophobe – you can occasionally find him on Instagram, where he posts photos of various co-stars, ads for his mezcal line with the actor Bryan Cranston, snapshots from an idyllic family life – but he regularly does “social media detoxes” and deletes the app, saying “we need to be cautious”. He’s no transhumanist. “Just look at the dangers of AI … Some of it’s cool, I guess? But we’re playing with fire. It’s hard for me not to think that the Amish community has their finger on the pulse. Keep it simple. Do things with your hands. Live off the land. There’s something nice about that.”
I bring up the fact that Black Mirror was trending on Twitter recently following the release of Apple Vision Pro – the new augmented reality headset that isn’t exactly worlds apart from the contact lenses that appear in the season one episode Entire History of You, which premiered back in 2011 (though hopefully our actual memories will remain for our eyes only, unlike in the show). “Oh, man,” there’s that trademark drawl again. “It’s terrifying to me. I don’t know why everything needs to be documented at all times, always,” says Paul.
“The thing is, the younger generation were born into it. They don’t have a choice because this is all they know. I see these young kids and they are always on their phones, and you get them on a table together and they don’t know how to communicate with each other in a real life, personal, face-to-face way. That’s one of the reasons that I love these worlds. Charlie [Brooker] is such a genius. He’s able to shape such beautiful warning signs for us.”
To say too much about the plot of Beyond the Sea would be a spoiler, but it’s based in a parallel version of 1969 with advanced technology. Paul plays an astronaut, with a wife and kid at home, but it’s much less about space than it is about isolation, grief and, as ever, the precarious gulf between perception and reality. There’s one vivid scene in which we see the frightening results of an intense ideological backlash towards certain technology. To some, his tech isn’t “natural”, normal or the way that things should go. To me, this backlash feels very late-1960s. Today, we’re more likely to blindly accept things as they come, without major pushback. I ask Paul whether he agrees. “I’m not sure,” he says. “We’re in a time in which technology is so ingrained that people just kind of lean in, even though you’re seeing all these alarms blaring. People just seem to say: ‘Well, here we are!’”
This isn’t actually Paul’s first Black Mirror episode – he makes a brief voice cameo in season four’s USS Callister – but he “begged” Brooker to “please not consider this to be my episode of Black Mirror”. Brooker approached him again for season five, but scheduling clashes meant it couldn’t work.
“So I begged him again, like: ‘Please, please keep coming to me.’ He approached me with this and I jumped at the chance … When I read that final page, I was like: ‘We have to make it happen, whatever we have to do, let’s do it.’”
Beyond the Sea sees Paul at his typically emotionally charged, brooding best. The actor has a way of appearing anguished and bewildered at the same time, an intense darkness simmering beneath boyish looks (yes, still boyish, even at 43). It’s a role he’s come to embody frequently over the years. Although he has been involved in plenty of major projects – including season three of Westworld, where he again played a tormented character – most people still know him best as Jesse Pinkman, the twentysomething drug dealer who seemed to always be wearing a baggy hoodie, smoking a huge bowl and looking genuinely stressed out about whatever new drama was set to befall him.
I wonder why he always seems to be enacting some sort of major turbulence on screen. Why not a comedy or a romance next time? “You’d need to talk to my therapist about that,” he says, laughing. No, but seriously. Why is he drawn to these roles? “I just don’t find myself funny,” he says. “Being a comedic actor is extremely hard. With that said, if I gravitated towards a funny script, I think I’d lean in … I like to be challenged. I love to play characters that are dealing with a lot of conflict. It gives me something to sink my teeth into. But in my day-to-day life, I’m happily married. I’ve got two precious little babies. I’m extremely happy. I just like to mix it up.”
Much of our conversation circles back to his family, to whom he’s clearly very dedicated. He used to always be consumed by his next goal, he says, but in recent years he’s found himself more focused on his family than anything else (he has two kids, aged 5 and 14 months). He has a “three-night rule” about travelling, which means he tries hard not to go longer than three nights without them, if they can’t join him. “This project I’m on now is the longest I’ve been away from them, ever,” he sighs. “Being away from them now has been really rough on me … I like to have things brewing, but I’m finding that I’m [gaining] more from outside this industry than I anticipated.”
So what does he do when he’s not acting? Like, what’s he going to do after this? Paul says he’s probably going to stick on some 90s movies, which he’s been mainlining from the Airbnb he’s staying at. After that, he’ll crash out. He’s been working six-day weeks, with long arduous days of shooting, and needs to retain his energy as much as possible. Once the film’s wrapped, he and his family are driving down to Idaho, where he’s from, to spend the summer among the mountains, lakes and hot springs. He’s obsessed with nature. He may have moved to LA at 17 “with nothing but a pocketful of cash”, but he’s still drawn to the wilderness, the absolute freedom of it all.
I tell him I’ve never been to Idaho, but that I’d love to go one day. He immediately invites me to stay in his holiday home if I do ever visit, because he’s literally very rarely there. Sure, I think, he’s probably just being polite. But then he doubles down, describing how there’s a hot spring inside. “I’m trying to tempt you to experience Idaho because it’s a beautiful, magical place and I’m very proud to be from there. I really mean that. Seriously, don’t hesitate to ping me. Let me know you’re coming and I’ll make sure it’s all set up for you – truly.”
I hang up seriously considering whether I should arrange a trip to stay in Paul’s Idaho house for some time away from the city. Hell – I could even go … next week? But then I bring myself back down to earth. Aaron Paul is exactly the sort of person who invites everyone to stay in his holiday home, rent-free. He probably invites people he’s just met on the street to stay. There is probably not a single person in his vicinity who has not been invited to his holiday home.
I wonder whether this trait has anything to do with the fact that he came from very little, as “a 12-year-old collecting coins to come out to LA”. He’s no nepo baby, that’s for sure. I wonder whether that sense of disbelief ever truly leaves you, even decades later, when you have enough wealth to accumulate multiple homes.
Earlier in our conversation, he told me that it doesn’t, not really. Looking around set yesterday, he said, he had another “pinch me” moment. “Once you stop pinching yourself, I don’t know … I feel like some of the magic is gone,” he said. “I feel like I’m always going to be pinching myself.”
Black Mirror season six is out now.
