MICHAELA COEL

IS HEADING TO WAKANDA…

Continuing her astonishing rise with Black Panther 2.

hen Michaela Coel starred in Charlie Brooker’s peak Black Mirror outing, ‘USS Callister’, she showed a flair for making lofty tech-talk accessible. “Fucking gizmo,” indeed. That flair and other talents besides should see the TV star right for her next mission: a visit to fresh blockbuster frontiers.

Who Coel will play in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is as yet unconfirmed. But whoever it is, the East London-born actor is a lightning-in-a-bottle catch for the Ryan Coogler-directed sequel.

The rocket fuel for Coel’s fame was last year’s deeply personal TV show I May Destroy You, a semiautobiographical account of sexual assault that became one of those occasions in small-screen history when a show seems to reshape the culture around it. Coel turned down $1m to make the series for Netflix because she wouldn’t keep the copyright. Awards and a skyrocketing career followed its

BBC showing, stressing the impression of an entirely own-terms victory. “Whatever I would say is all in there,” Coel later said.

The result was a far cry from an early blockbuster outing. Regarding her brief spot in Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, Coel joked she barely expected to make the final cut. But she did, with three words: “They found us.” Meanwhile, keen-eyed viewers could find Coel stacking up a quality cargo hold of screen appearances. Developed from Chewing Gum Dreams, a show she created studying at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the Bafta-winning

TV comedy Chewing Gum was a whipsharp calling card.

Elsewhere, Coel brought a typically innate intelligence to the musical romcom Been So Long and no-nonsense conviction to E4’s The Aliens. She also owned another Black Mirror gig as an air steward, slipping between slick, sarcastic and stern in seconds as she chastises Bryce Dallas Howard’s language. But no one will be checking Coel’s language in her next TV show, Jan 22nd, following the unfiltered hit of I May Destroy You. Asked about how she deals with such success, Coel has said, “I tend to go somewhere to hide a little bit.” With Wakanda calling, it looks like she’s done with laying low. KH

ETA | 8 JULY 2022 / BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER WILL BE RELEASED NEXT YEAR. JAN 22ND IS TBC.