Michaela Coel on the hookup generation: 'They'll study us when we're dead and gone'
Michaela Coel exploded on to our screens with her surreal, filthy sitcom Chewing Gum, about a sexually frustrated 24-year-old losing her religion. Five years on, the actor and writer is returning with an entirely different creation: I May Destroy You, a searing, 12part drama about consent, friendship and the challenges faced by young creatives, in a plot inspired by her own experience of sexual assault.
Coel plays Arabella, a razor-sharp Twitter-star-turned-author, struggling to adapt to her status as a millennial icon. Kwame (Paapa Essiedu) is a seemingly carefree personal trainer who enjoys frequent hookups with men he meets on Grindr, while Terry (Weruche Opia) is trying to make her way in acting – and finding that even the most innocuous audition can turn into an awkward, racialised scenario.
Although Arabella’s life is changed for ever by an attack, the show still manages to explore the tribulations of being young and alive. From stark police interrogations to a booze-soaked Italian nightclub, I May Destroy You is a striking series, often hilarious and affecting in the same beat. I spoke to Coel, Essiedu and Opia to find out more.
The majority of the show’s key players are black, which is rare on TV. Do you worry about being pigeonholed as a ‘black show’?
Michaela Coel (Arabella): I don’t really think about that stuff, I just make content. We need diversity on screen, but I do not start my work with anxiety about that. I’m writing a story – and the best people took the parts. I wasn’t crowbarring anything in. I’ve got no worries in terms of this. My only desire is to get shows like this made more often. With streaming services, the little image on the front can influence whether people click or not and I find that really sad.
Your characters code-switch, speaking differently when they talk to other people. How important is authenticity for you?
MC: To me, these things aren’t conscious. Maybe that’s a sign of living in authenticity, to not be thinking about these things. There isn’t a formula.
Paapa Essiedu (Kwame): As a performer, when you’re reading a script, you want to feel like there’s a plasticity to the way a character speaks. It is important that they speak differently when they’re in a police interrogation room, or when they’re talking to their friends, or talking to a friend in front of their mum as opposed to in privacy. It felt like all of those were spot-on, and that helps you make the character authentic.
MC: I didn’t think about codeswitching when I wrote Kwame’s scene in the police station, even though I’m aware it’s there now. Code-switching is so embedded into us.
PE: It is particularly prevalent in London and in the creative industries, because there’s such a wide variety of people from different backgrounds and ethnicities.
MC: I think it’s a privilege to be able to do it – because it means you understand that there’s more than one code. You’re able to stand outside and observe.
Weruche Opia (Terry): I don’t ever recall code-switching with Terry. I don’t know if it was a conscious decision, but I think it helps me keep Terry as Terry in every single situation.
PE: I will challenge you on that. Terry is different when she’s in the audition room – there’s a performative element to the way she speaks and the language she uses.
WO: I don’t agree. Her energy switches, but I wouldn’t say it’s her code.
MC: In the police station, Terry switches code. She’s quiet and polite.
WO: Is code-switching the manner in which you speak, or the language you use?
MC: Think of when you go to Nigeria, Weruche, that’s a code-switch. When you go into a restaurant, as you engage with the people there, that might be different to how you do it here. The way you walk down the street, the way you say hello, that’s all different. Your energy is different to when we went to that Vogue party. And this is the privilege we have, to travel through different cultures, places, economies – the “challenge” of code-switching is a privilege.
I May Destroy You covers sexual assault and trauma. Did it challenge any of your preconceptions?
PE: It didn’t necessarily change my thoughts on sexual assault or consent, but it definitely showed consent in a different way – it being given and then withdrawn [in a non-heterosexual situation]. It’s something we don’t usually see on TV. This is a trailblazing show in that respect.
MC: I just couldn’t write this show without thinking about men’s relationship with consent, and bringing men on this journey with me. The conversation around consent is often about women. I wanted to widen it out. It seems like men are sometimes scared of saying the wrong thing.
WO: Like Paapa, it did make me think again. Terry is in a situation where she feels like she’s in control. She has a threesome with two men, and she feels powerful. But there’s another side to it – we see how pally the men are and we wonder how much of it was consensual. There’s this anxiety there.
PE: I think these characters are real survivors, not just in terms of sexual assault. They are people who are faced with real challenges from the top, and who deal with them with courage and integrity and togetherness.
The show highlights the difficulty of creative work, with Terry struggling in the acting world. Does this reflect your experiences?
WO: I’ve definitely had experiences like Terry has at her audition, when she’s told to take her wig off and is asked invasive questions about her hair. I haven’t had anything that bad, but I’ve definitely had experiences where I’ve not been comfortable. If there had been a black woman there, that wouldn’t have happened.
MC: There is a black woman in that scene – on the panel.
WO: Is it that her voice is stifled then? Or what? Michaela, what was that about?
MC: I don’t have answers in terms of who feels what and why. I’m not trying to judge the moment, or push us to one side or another. I’m just presenting a situation I think people will recognise.
We also have Arabella, an author, finding the writing process suffocating. Michaela, was that semiautobiographical?
MC: It was definitely one of the things that I was thinking about. A lot of the time, because writers are freelance, we’re often on a break – which actually means we’re never on a break.There’s never a time when we make sure we’re not thinking about work. The phone and social media are on all the time.And yet breaks are so helpful – they help us become better people, better creatives and better actors. We’ve become so good at making things look easy, people don’t think of the years – and the hundreds of people – behind things.
Is Arabella intended to be a ‘voice of a generation’ character?
MC: I think Arabella speaks to our entire generation. I’m sure they’ll study us when we’re dead and gone – this generation who were given the internet at the same time as they were learning to articulate and think. She has so little time to form her thoughts, and there’s pressure on whatever she says.
PE: There are a couple of moments later in the series where you see characters posting certain versions of themselves on the internet. You see the effort behind it, which I think is a big part of the anxiety that affects people of our generation. It’s quite difficult to be yourself on the internet and in real