Characters / Black Mirror: Nosedive

Lacie

Lacie

Portrayed By: Bryce Dallas Howard

• Ambiguously Bi: She is shown to be attracted to men and during the climax, she declares that she loves Naomi, but it isn't clear if she means it in a sisterly way or in a less platonic way.
• Establishing Character Moment: The episode opens with her standing in front of a mirror trying to look natural while laughing.
• Fiery Redhead: Once she stops caring about being liked by everyone, her fiery temper comes out.
• Go-Getter Girl: Arguably the biggest part of her personality. She is extremely ambitious and driven while simultaneously being willing to please other people.
• Hollywood Homely: Bryce Dallas Howard gained weight for the role (overlapping with Hollywood Pudgy) and is constantly described as being significantly uglier than Alice Eve's Naomi. She's still a beautiful woman and it's near-impossible to see how. Though given the hyper-judgemental, nitpicky and cruelly superficial world she lives in, it makes a certain amount of sense that even minor "blemishes" would be ballooned into major flaws.
• Hypocrite:
  • Even after getting reduced to a 2, Lacie still blindly follows the system and refuses Susan's offer of a ride because she's a low 1.
  • She accuses Naomi of doing everything just for the sake of the numbers, while as Naomi correctly points out, she too only agrees to attend the wedding to boost her own number.
• Love Martyr: A possibly platonic example. Even after Ryan points out how abusive Naomi was to her during their childhood, Lacie rationalizes all of that away and then denies the one thing that cannot be excused (Naomi sleeping with her boyfriend).
• Meaningful Name: 'Lacie', like the soft feminine fabric, and 'Pound' like the currency for the social-climber who needs more money. Also doubles as a means of measuring weight, and Lacie is shown to suffer from Weight Woe.
• Redheads Are Uncool: Lacie has ginger-red hair and is constantly fighting for approval. However, it's clear that she's desperate for approval and bases her whole worth on it.
• Sanity Slippage: By the end of her Humiliation Conga at the wedding, she's a giggling, drunken loon and she ends up pulling a knife on the guests and threatening Mr. Rags with it.
  Lacie: STAY BACK! I'LL KILL HIM!
• Social Climber: Justified, considering how the society in this world functions.
• Verbal Backpedaling: Very prone to this, as her Stepford Smiler facade cracks pretty easily under duress. Of note is when she yells at the charge station guy for giving her a two-star, then immediately lowers her voice and rephrases it.

Naomi

Naomi

Portrayed By: Alice Eve

• Alpha Bitch: She is pretty, very popular, and one of the "primes", and she's also very mean and obnoxious. She used to bully Lacie when they were younger, and apparently she only kept her around to feel good about herself at Lacie's expense. She only approaches Lacie again after a long time because bringing an old contact with a low four rating as her maid of honor would play well with her guests, as it would seem like a genuine friendship, but the moment her rating begins to drop, she tries to ditch her, openly admits she only invited her because of numbers, and humiliates her once again, saying there's no way she could get the "primo votes" on her own.
• Bad Influencer: "High 4" Naomi is an Alpha Bitch all grown up. She bullied Lacie and slept with Lacie's boyfriend Greg despite claiming to be her friend. In the present, she smiles as she watches Lacie mentally and emotionally collapse in front of her at her wedding, clearly enjoying the sympathy and notoriety she's about to get.
• The Beautiful Elite: Naomi is a popular upper-class socialite, and due to being played by Alice Eve, is flawlessly beautiful to boot. No wonder she's so intimidating.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She makes a point of seeming very nice but she treated Lacie very poorly in the past and it becomes gradually clear she isn't any better now and her supposed kindness is a complete facade.
• Brick Joke: As much as a joke about Self-Harm could be. Ryan's comment about how high 4's are probably suicidal on the inside is vindicated when Naomi is wearing her wedding dress and a long, faint scar running down her forearm can be seen.
• The Bully: Has always treated Lacie like crap, and the only reason she invites her to the wedding is to make herself look good in comparison.
• Bully Turned Buddy: Averted. She and Lacie like to give off this impression but it's clear the two still detest one another and Naomi is just as mean-spirited now as she was then.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: Invoked. The extremely popular Naomi has platinum blonde hair.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Naomi may be an elitist bitch who only invited Lacie to increase her score, but she is not wrong to mention that Lacie only accepted her invitation for the same selfish reason.
• False Friend: Naomi wanted Lacie to be her maid of honor purely because a 4.8 giving the honor to a "mere" 4.2 looked great on rating projections - and when Lacie's score drops to the low 2's, Naomi immediately drops her oldest friend. Given some choice comments, Naomi probably never was Lacie's friend really. Also, it should be noted that 3.8 is the minimum ranking allowed for entry into the property, let alone the party itself.
• Lady Macbeth: Naomi never gets her hands dirty. She literally invokes this when she bullies Paul into kicking Lacie out.
• Marriage of Convenience: It is heavily implied her marriage to Paul is purely for the sake of a mutual ratings boost.
• Ms. Fanservice: Deliberately invokes this, posing in bikinis and form-fitting athletic outfits in her social media pictures.
• Villain with Good Publicity: When Lacie's rating drops, we see Naomi for The Bully she is, shouting, screaming, and generally being extremely rude, controlling, and dismissive to Lacie. This is also clearly not a one-time thing, because she seduced Lacie's boyfriend and manipulated and demeaned her constantly. One of the most chilling images of the episode is Naomi grinning with delight when she realises the boost she's getting as her oldest friend has a sobbing, screaming breakdown because of her.

Susan

Susan

Portrayed By: Cherry Jones

• Brutal Honesty: When she lost her husband, she unloaded how she really felt about everyone and everything around her. That sort of thing doesn't fly well in this society, but she's long past the point of caring.
• Cool Old Lady: She doesn't mince words but is also helpful and willing to give people advice and encourage them to live their best life. She also gives Lacie a little whiskey as an "escape hatch" should shit hit the fan.
• Fallen Princess: Used to be a highly rated member of the upper crust, until her husband died due to being passed over for lifesaving medical care for someone with a slightly higher rating.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's long since stopped giving even the slightest shit about social niceties but she's not a bad person. She helps Lacie when she's in a bind and gives her sincerely good and well-intentioned advice to just abandon the system and be herself and wants to see others get the same freedom she has.
• The Lost Lenore: Her husband, whose death from cancer prompted her to drop out of society.
• The Mentor: Becomes one to Lacie in a way.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Mentions that she used to be just like Lacie until the social rating system led to her husband’s death, after that she stopped caring about her social rating.
• Worth It: Susan lost her former social standing after she let everyone she knew know how she really felt about them, but she has zero regrets.

Ryan

Ryan

Portrayed By: James Norton

• Annoying Younger Sibling: To Lacie.
• Friendless Background: Subverted. Ryan is actually the only character in the movie shown to have genuine friends, with whom he can be himself around. Even getting evicted from the house doesn't hurt him much because he knows someone who's willing to let him be his roommate.
• Irony: The guy who spends most of his time playing VR games with his friends is the one most in touch with reality besides Susan.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He's blunt about it but he also rightly sees and calls out how miserable the system is, how living in such a way is extremely damaging and how it's all but destroyed Lacie's personality. He also accurately calls out how Naomi was horrible to Lacie for years and isn't any nicer now, only asking her to be maid of honor to make herself look good.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: For all his flaws, he loves his sister dearly and hates how trying to live through a brutally arbitrary and insane system has damaged her.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Lacie claims that he gets his likes from his gamer friends and so shouldn't judge her for garnering them in her own way; indeed, his score might be nothing special seen through the eyes of a hardcore Social Climber, but Lacie meets many people on the grind who are way lower. Either way, he certainly doesn't pursue those stars as aggressively as she does, to the point of actively changing his personality or sucking up to people he hates.
• Only Sane Man: He finds the whole ratings system stupid and doesn't concern himself with it, preferring to just be himself. (Though, as Lacie points out, even he takes part in the system, it's practically impossible not to).
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Very strongly with Lacie. They start off being complete opposites.
• The Slacker: He doesn't seem to work, living off his sister and his friends and playing video games all day.

---