Entertainment

Writer Jesse Armstrong detests me, says Black Mirror's Toby Kebbell

The actor said the Peep Show co-creator would not consider him to revive the role the film after Robert Downey Jr bought the rights.
The actor said the Peep Show co-creator would not consider him to revive the role the film after Robert Downey Jr bought the rights. The actor said the Peep Show co-creator would not consider him to revive the role the film after Robert Downey Jr bought the rights.

Toby Kebbell has said he would have no chance of getting a role in the Hollywood adaptation of his Black Mirror episode because its writer “detests” him.

The actor said Peep Show co-creator Jesse Armstrong did not rate his performance and he has no prospect of reviving the role in the film after Robert Downey Jr bought the rights.


Toby Kebbell Black Mirror Jesse Armstrong
Toby Kebbell Black Mirror Jesse Armstrong
Jesse Armstrong (left) with Armando Iannucci (Yui Mok/PA)

Kebbell starred in the episode The Entire History Of You in the International Emmy-winning TV series created by Charlie Brooker.

On Saturday, the 34-year-old told the Press Association: “He certainly wouldn’t approach me.

“They said I was too macho, I had to audition four times for the role. They would not let me have the role.

“The writer, who was a fantastic writer and still is, he has my admiration, he was a great guy, but I think he detests me as a human.

“Jesse wrote it, it’s his thing, he saw it his way, I’m sure if you spoke to him he wouldn’t feel like I did it justice.”

The episode was set in an alternate reality where people have implants that record everything they see and hear so they can have their entire memories played back to them.

Downey Jr reportedly beat George Clooney in a bidding war in 2013 to turn the Channel 4 episode into a science-fiction thriller.

Kebbell, a comic book enthusiast who played Dr Doom in the Fantastic Four film, said he would reprise the role but would rather it was not in a sequel to the 2015 movie.


Toby Kebbell Black Mirror
Toby Kebbell Black Mirror
Kebbell at the premiere of Kong: Skull Island (Chris J Ratcliffe/PA)

“He was a great bad guy but if he’s trapped in the Fantastic Four universe it’s a shame for Marvel,” he said.

“Restricting Doom to Four, it’s pointless.”

Kebbell, who found fame in Shane Meadows’s Dead Man’s Shoes, was speaking from the red carpet at the Los Angeles Film Festival at the premiere of his latest film, The Female Brain.

The film, directed by comedian Whitney Cummings, is about relationships and how men and women’s perceptions of them differ.