Crocked knee, torn ligament, lost voice ... NOTHING stops me

SINGING in a movie musical proved a tad tricky for Michaela Coel once she’d lost her voice. ‘During the shoot, my voice just went,’ she says, recalling the troubles she endured while making Been So Long, the screen adaptation of Che Walker’s 2009 stage hit about friends, frenemies and lovers who collide in Camden Town. (The piece was augmented with songs by Arthur Darvill and Christopher Bangs.) Once Coel’s honeyed singing voice had returned, she dubbed over the recordings she’d struggled to make during filming. Watching the picture, shown last week at the British Film Institute’s London Film Festival and due to be streamed on Netflix from October 26, you’d be hardpressed to know that there had been a problem. Coel refused to take a break to rest her voice. She carried on filming and a doctor prescribed steroids, so there would be no delays. The 31yearold showed similar fortitude during the filming of Hugo Blick’s superb BBC2 drama series Black Earth Rising. While on location in Ghana, she fell into a deep gutter, tearing a ligament and injuring her knee. ‘The doctors said I had to rest,’ she tells me. ‘And the producers said they’d rearrange the schedule. I said that I could not take time off. And I didn’t have a single day off.’ She felt that it was imperative she continue playing legal investigator Kate Ashby in the compelling story about bringing war criminals to justice. ‘It’s about genocide ... happening now!’ she says. The knee’s still recovering, but she shrugs when I ask how she’s coping. ‘This is nothing compared to the bigger picture,’ she says, explaining that she was determined that Black Earth Rising — one of the year’s best TV dramas — should be part of the conversation when people discuss war crimes.

Coel invested months of her time preparing to play the formidable Kate, a woman who says exactly what’s on her mind.

She trained in single sculling at Latymer Rowing Club, spent six months studying the drama’s political topics and even learned French!

Essentially, she’s the heart of Black Earth Rising. And she and Arinzé Kene are the heartbeat of Been So Long.

Now she’s writing January 22nd, a comedy drama about sexual consent, for BBC2, which she’ll also direct, produce and star in.

The title refers to the date Michaela herself was sexually assaulted. ‘It’s about what it’s like to go through trauma, and have no days off,’ she says.

Coel has become a role model. She said that when she was growing up in East London, there were no role models who looked like her. That’s why she pushed to play single mother Simone in Been So Long.

‘I thought it was important to have someone like me: someone with no hair, who is darker than the usual romantic lead. Just the chance to have one (role model) for the people who look like me.’

MICHAELA tells me that she has been seeing a therapist for two years and ten months. ‘I think in this industry you need to make sure you’re really keeping yourself on the ground. So you have to have someone to really check in with. You can be led astray, mentally, into focusing on all the parts that lead you to anxiety.’

Coel notes that her therapy ‘and all the thinking in between’ allows her to focus on being a storyteller.

You can’t argue with her logic. Her Chewing Gum television comedy shows have garnered her Bafta and Royal Television Society honours.

‘I’m grateful to be working,’ she says. ‘That’s what the therapy does for you.’