Woman We Love: Michaela Coel

Michaela Coel transformed her trauma into television that both enlightens and excites with I May Destroy You. Here, she shares her healing process, race and society’s wounds

Michaela coel was recently Out for a jog when she spotted a young woman riding a bike in front of her. It’s a standard sight, like things you might see on a run go, yet there was an abnormality that made this cyclist a particular point of interest for Coel. The young woman was white and strapped to her back was a Black Lives Matter sign. Other passers-by looked at the girl and scoffed; Michaela accelerated her speed.

‘I thought to myself, “oh, my god, Is this what you have to deal with? You have to deal with maybe your family members scoffing at you for having empathy?”’ she says thoughtfully, before flashing her smile, the one she can’t hold back, even when the topic of conversation threatens to dim its light. ‘I felt so appreciative of that white girl. I sped up to catch up with her ,and I went, “I appreciate you, sis!”’

Coel’s sentiment of appreciation has now been reciprocated by the whole world – or anyone who’s watched her latest groundbreaking show, I May Destroy You, at least. And it’s her show: she wrote it, she stars in it, she co-directed it with Sam Miller and she co-executive produced it. Almost singlehandedly, Coel has made the best television show of the year.

Throwing its viewers into a technicolour portrait of London, Coel stars as Arabella, a Twitter user-turned-author who is sexually assaulted the night before an important deadline. In one fell swoop, it addresses issues of consent, race, youth culture and working in the media, with the kind of nuance that is rarely seen on screen – if ever.

It’s complex, but accessible; heavy, but also a joy to watch. In her conversations with friends, we see an authentic and fully realised representation of Black Londoners that both humanises and celebrates their culture. In sex scenes, such as one that involves the awkward removal of a tampon, we see the numerous taboos that we’re often too embarrassed to discuss with friends in real life. In a flashback to Arabella’s school days, we see how the naive cruelty of school children can shape people for the rest of their lives. In Arabella – although viewers might not realise it – we see Michaela Coel too. In fact, one of the most significant things about I May Destroy You is that it was inspired by its creator’s own harrowing experiences.

In 2016 , Coel was sexually assaulted by strangers, after being drugged while meeting a friend for a drink, like Arabella, the night before a deadline. The details of the incident aren’t necessary, they’re painful, yet Coel chose to share them with the world in 2018 when she became the first Black woman to deliver the prestigious Mactaggart lecture. Now, she’s blurred the lines between reality and fiction with I May Destroy You’s protagonist, Arabella, amalgamating friends’ anecdotes and her own experiences for a searing commentary on consent, assault and that murky, grey area in between. Its viewers are in both shock and awe: the first in response to the naturally upsetting themes in the show, the latter at her talent, bravery and tremendous gift for storytelling. But what else happened in 2016? Well, Coel was busy writing the second season of her other groundbreaking, hit show, Chewing

Gum, in which she starred as (and created and wrote) Tracey Gordon, a religious 24-year-old living on a London council estate who was hellbent on losing her virginity. Like I May Destroy You, the show was inspired greatly by her own experiences growing up in Hackney and Tower Hamlets in London, where she was raised by her Ghanaian mother, and celebrates life on the estate rather than depicting it as a place riddled with gang crime.

Starting life as a 20-minute, one-woman play that she performed in lieu of the other production her peers were taking part in for their final-year assessment at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Chewing Gum was soon extended into an hour-long show for The Yard Theatre in Hackney. Not long after that, the BBC swooped in and commissioned it for television. Now 33, all of this happened before Coel had even turned 27.

It’s an impressive CV, but it doesn’t stop there: After Chewing Gum came a turn in Black Mirror, as the difficult airline stewardess in “Nosedive”. The following year, Coel returned to Black Mirror in “USS Callister”. Next, she was enlisted for Hugo Blick’s Black Earth Rising, as well as the leading role in the musical Been So Long, in 2018. Before you pause for breath, it’s probably also worth mentioning that Coel was in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and the original series of Top Boy. She excels in every role, no matter how large or small, but no more so when she is in control of the narrative herself.

Back to the not-quite-post-apocalyptic present day. It’s the middle of a global pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests are still filling streets across the world, Michaela Coel is beaming at me through a Zoom call. Like I said, she can’t hold back her smile. Her warmth radiates through even the most unreliable of internet connections. Aside from I May Destroy You’s success, a lot is going on in the world at the moment and, as such, a lot for everyone to process. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that Coel’s already got a lot of it figured out.

gq: Congratulations on I May

Destroy You. It must’ve been equally challenging and cathartic to write. Did you always intend for it to be a piece of work that would have such a public platform on TV? »

‘Since the media has existed, it has dehumanised Black people’

Michaela coel: I don’t think I have a version of writing that’s not intended to be shared. I have a personal journal, but my artistic writing is always meant to be shared. If it’s shared with one, it’s shared with all. If I was doing plays it probably would have ended up being a play, but I'm doing TV, which I’m very happy about because it reaches large numbers and people don’t have to make much effort to see it. I think for our brains TV is quite easy to digest, so I'm glad that this was the format.

gq: How did people close to you respond when you told them that you would be using your experience as inspiration for the show?

Mc: Nobody ever thought it wouldn’t be a good idea. I think that probably my friends may have had reservations that they didn’t share with me, because now that it’s out, some of them are, like, “Well, when you told me, I wasn’t sure, but now that it’s out…” You say to somebody that you’re making a show about sexual consent, but I think that people have a prejudice about what that might be. For me, this show was never, ever coming from a place of anger but a place of curiosity and exploration. I think a lot of people maybe didn’t quite understand that.

gq: There are some key parallels between your story and Arabella’s story in the way that the incident happens. How similar is the rest of the narrative to your own experiences?

Mc: Many of the things that happened to Arabella didn’t happen to me. In many ways, there’s no separation between Arabella and I, but in other ways, of course, there is, because she exists on that screen and I’m here. Many things feel very similar, but, also, I’ve written a fictional story. It’s hard to answer this question, and that’s the kind of magical element of television.

gq: You spoke to other sexual assault survivors while you were writing the show. Was that something you were already doing for yourself?

Mc: It was to encapsulate as many experiences [as possible for the show]. I never went to a support group like Arabella does, I just had therapy. It’s also because I was always very open about what was going on, so it meant that my friends suddenly felt like I could identify with something that had happened to them that they’d never spoken about. They began to share stories because they knew what had happened to me. I would literally say, “Can I write about this?” That became the inspiration for these kinds of fictional plots, but they’re all very real. They’re all based on things that have happened to people.

gq: What was your healing process like after the event? Were there any moments where you felt it was hard to manage what was going on internally and externally in your life?

Mc: Your question is, “What was your healing process?” but I think the more accurate way to ask it is, “What is your healing process?” Because it’s never really paused. That’s a line from the Hugo Blick show [Black Earth Rising]. The past isn’t ever really in the past. You have to learn to manage it. And it stays with you.

You have to learn to have power over the thing instead of it having power of you. Now, I try to keep things in my life like meditation. I started getting into yoga quite a lot, so that was really helpful. Spending time with my friends and writing the show was really helpful. I think that what I wish I’d done was take a break. This is the thing that I think would’ve accelerated a lot of the process in terms of how you deal with the trauma. I think if you don’t have a second to stop and analyse where you might feel and how you’re doing, then it can be problematic. I didn’t really get that chance, which meant that by the time I came to writing it, there were a lot of things I had to unpick about the loss of four years of my life.

I did Black Mirror for the first time quite soon after everything that had happened, and I was so thankful for a focus that wasn’t about what had happened to me. With these things you’ve got jobs to do: you’ve got a job to do, you have to do it, and people are counting on you.

gq: Was it a conscious decision to not take a break?

Mc: It was the schedule at the time. I think it was probably very obvious that I needed a break, but nobody was going to tell me to take a break. I was, in hindsight, clearly suffering from PTSD, so I wouldn’t have known to take a break, and the nature of television is that the show really must go on.

gq: Something that struck me while I was watching the show was that we so rarely see Black women, such as Arabella, portrayed as vulnerable on TV. What are your thoughts on the kind of impact that this has, not only on Black women but also on society’s perception of us?

Mc: Who would’ve known that we’d be where we are right now politically, in terms of police brutality, racism, the coronavirus and the inherent, strange biases that this virus has. Although everything’s heartbreaking, I feel quite grateful to be able to present a show to the world that humanises us right now.

I think that since the media has existed, it has dehumanised Black people. In many ways, it’s dehumanised and disempowered women. To be within the media, to challenge that, and to present us as fluid, multi-dimensional human people, just like everybody else, feels like a really amazing privilege.

gq: How have you been processing everything that’s going on at the moment with police brutality and Black Lives Matter?

Mc: It’s very hard, isn’t it? It’s very complex because as the news events unfold, I feel like there’s something that feels like you’re hitting against a brick wall in terms of the government, the way the police system’s run and the systematic racism that permeates through. What I love is that I do kind of feel like it seems a bit different. It seems like the protesting is having a different effect. I, for some reason, have this sense of hope. I feel very proud of the way we’re working together, even if it’s just to stand there in solidarity. I just feel appreciative of the people who are doing whatever they can from wherever they are. If the only power you have in this life right now is to put a fucking sign on your back and ride on the bicycle, then do it. I think we should all just continue to be the change that we want to be for where we are, [and to] do your job, whatever that may be. Like, your job right now is to raise this in a discussion with me and put it in your article and share it to people.

gq: There’s also been a lot of conversation around diversity in the

‘We should all just continue to be the change that we want to be’

media. When you started studying at Guildhall, you were the first Black woman to be accepted in five years. What was that like?

Mc: It was a real experience, you know, it was very challenging. It was three years of struggle: struggling to understand why I didn’t feel safe, but also of bonding with people in my school year that I would never have encountered had I not gone to drama school. When else would I have been able to form a loving friendship with a gay boy from Wales, living as a workingclass, Black Londoner? You don’t get to be close to people like that. I’ve got to really form those bonds, but also I was dealing with an old system that didn’t understand me and didn’t understand that they didn’t understand me. And it was hard.

But I also think, if it was easy, I don’t know if I would’ve become the person that I am today. I was very vocal – I’ve always been a very vocal person – and it meant that by the time I graduated, I was in no delusion that this industry wasn’t going to be a tricky place.

I was through the shocking part, which enabled me to be better at acting – not as an actress, but when something was going wrong, I would act rather than be repressed and silence myself. That’s never been my mode. I was never worried about speaking up and I think other people are. That’s OK. Your job might not be to be loud and shake the apple carts. That’s my job. Looking over my career, it’s clearly just what I do.

gq: There have been a lot of conversations online about how the media industry can take such a deep toll on diverse talent that it drives them out because they have to protect their mental health. Is that something that you relate to at all?

Mc: I think that the privilege that I have in this situation is that I’ve essentially tried to subconsciously make myself indispensable, so I’ll star in the thing, I’ll write the thing, I’ll co-direct the thing, I’ll executive produce the thing, which means it means that it would be very hard to drive me out. However, I think that, for many of my peers, it’s really hard as a Black woman in this industry. I was in the shop yesterday, and I was so delighted to see [BBC radio DJ] Clara Amfo on the front of Grazia. Clara’s job is hard, man, it’s the nature of being a presenter host. I see the differences. I see why it’s easier for me to speak than it is for Clara to speak. I just applaud her for managing this far.

gq: Has it been a challenge to have so much ownership over the things that you produce compared to your peers?

Mc: I don’t think too much about the challenges. With Chewing Gum, in hindsight, I can say, “Was this a fight to be heard?” Probably. I’d say it was a fight in comparison to the way I May Destroy You has gone, but at the time when I’m fighting, I’m not getting lost in the fact that it’s a fight. I’m always focused on the story. I’m serving the show. I don’t find it productive to sit there and think about the fact that I’m fighting. I need to sleep at night.

I need to come to work. I need to do my job. I need to make this a healthy environment for the cast and crew. When I speak out, it’s always directly to the people who have the power to change the situation. gq: Do you have any advice to young Black people trying to get into the industry or even just in general, in terms of taking care of themselves at this time?

Mc: There’s this unfortunate element of “I can give you words, but those words are not definitive, and those words do not bring any certainty in terms of your career aspirations”. But I can definitely say that it’ll only do you good to take regular breaks from social media and maybe not be on social media. I can say that it’ll do you good because it’ll give you time for introspection, but I don’t expect anybody to take that advice. When you’re creating, you have to investigate how you feel, how you think and who you are because you’re creating. That’s my advice.