Not even Dame Helen Mirren is immune to the joys of TikTok.
The esteemed actress heads to space in her future-set episode of Amazon Prime's Solos, and her character Peg spends some time reminiscing about her childhood days on TikTok. So of course, we had to ask her if she's among the millions of people who have taken to the short video app to entertain herself during quarantine. Shockingly the answer was, "A little bit, yes."
"I have to say, one of the great pleasures of the pandemic has been the inventiveness and the wit and the creativity of what people have been doing on the internet," she said. "I mean TikTok is absolutely part of that, but many other things as well. I mean just wonderful, inventiveness and wit and humor and poetry."
See? Our TikTok obsession is good!
Solos is a sort of Black Mirror-esque anthology series in which actors act alone or with a disembodied voice, essentially (and sometimes literally) talking to themselves. Mirren's episode involves a study that sends senior citizens to space.
She said she was really attracted to the "sensitivity and the beauty" of the writing, and was surprised to find that a piece that felt "so understanding of women" was written by a man.
Mirren also really appreciated just how British and apologetic Peg is.
"A lot of what Peg describes of being apologetic about—‘excuse me' and ‘I'm so sorry' and ‘would you mind terribly if I…' and ‘oh no, I understand if that's not'... She's very un-American in that way," Mirren said. "My husband is American and if he wants something at a restaurant, he'll say ‘I want a water.' And I'll say, ‘Excuse me, I'm terribly sorry to bother you. It's alright if you're busy but if you're not, if you could possibly get me a glass of water, it would be absolutely brilliant. I'd love that. Thank you so much.' You know, so it's a different kind of approach. So, there was a part of me that really understood Peg, but on the other hand as an actress, kind of overcome that element in myself. I really understood that sort of element and the way she's making this big effort to overcome all of that and be proactive in her life."
Hit play above for more from Mirren, and check out Solos when it arrives on Amazon Prime Video on Friday, May 21.