The Hollywood Reporter (Weekly) - The Hollywood Reporter Awards Special
I May Destroy You
Multihyphenate star Michaela Coel wants her show to encourage viewers to change their self-narratives: ‘How are you going to have empowerment in your life over the things people have done to you?’
Multihyphenate star Michaela Coel wants her show to encourage viewers to change their self-narratives: “How are you going to have empowerment in your life over the things people have done to you?”
IMay Destroy You is both a case of art imitating life and life imitating art. Michaela Coel’s masterful HBO limited series — which centers on a British writer named Arabella (Coel) who is dealing with the fallout of sexual assault, along with myriad other subjects — is rooted in her own experiences to the point that it’s tricky to tell where Bella stops and where Michaela begins. Conversely, Coel’s writing also has carried into real life — both in her close relationships with onscreen best friends Terry (Weruche Opia) and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu) and in the fact that fans regularly approach her in public to express their gratitude, as they do to her character in the show. One year after I May Destroy You debuted to sonorous acclaim, the series picked up nine Emmy nominations, including acting, writing and directing nods for Coel. The showrunnerstar shares with THR her insights on social media, balancing work and play, and what it’s like to wear so many hats on a production.
I May Destroy You is often billed as a work of autofiction. Is it important that other people know where Michaela ends and Arabella begins?
No, because I don’t even know where Bella [stops] and where Michaela begins. When I was writing, it [was like] there was my reality, Michaela, Arabella and then the writer, me. I looked at both the lives, including my own, as if they were separate from the writer. At some point, my life gets boring and isn’t very televisual. And so then Arabella begins. Most of the show is fictional, so I don’t even know if it legitimately falls under the category of autofiction. I’ve noticed some friends that only started watching the show a few weeks ago, they think people are real that aren’t real in the show, so I tell them, “Oh, this person isn’t real,” and they’re like, “No, don’t say that, you’re breaking my heart!”
Arabella struggles a lot with writer’s block and writes in bursts of inspiration. Is that reflective of your own writing process?
Yes, definitely. I’m not one of these
writers that writes every day for the sake of writing every day like it’s exercise. I think it would probably benefit me to try and be that writer, but I’m not. I need to carve out time and work until I’m lost in the thing [before] I’m finally enjoying it. I need the wave of inspiration. I’m definitely a lot like Arabella in that regard.
The series came out during lockdown, so I imagine you were mostly getting feedback through the internet and social media. A year later, have you had the chance to have any face-to-face conversations about it?
Actually, most of my finding out about the response was through meeting people, either on the street [when] I run every day or walking to [go] pick up a toilet roll. I don’t really use social media. I looked at Twitter — I’m talking like three or four times — because I’m used to, from my previous experiences, reading people’s tweets [and running] into a tweet that hurts [my] feelings. I don’t like to go there because I don’t like when my feelings are hurt. So it was on the street, you know, cycling — you stop at a traffic light, and there’s another cyclist, and they’ve seen the show. I’ve had really beautiful interactions with people that way. I’ve stood on the street with people and we’ve cried together.
Talk about life imitating art. I mean, that actually happens on the show.
It does! And what’s so interesting is that people would often catch themselves being like the person in the show [who approaches Arabella in the street] and say, “You know what, I’m not going to ask for a photo because that’s what people do in the show. Instead, I’m just going to say thank you.” What ends up happening, once the cameras are removed and the phones are removed, is I get to have actual real, meaningful exchanges with people. That’s so beautiful.
I May Destroy You refuses to paint villains or saints in broad strokes, which is not always the case when it comes to discourse about assault. What narratives did you set out to correct with the show, or was your focus on capturing an individual experience?
It’s about the narrative that we give ourselves, and what narratives are you going to have for your own life? Does it benefit you to see other people as complete and utter monsters, nothing but the devil inside of them? How does that help you sleep at night? How are you going to have empowerment in your life over the things people have done to you? That’s the narrative I’m trying to correct. I’m trying to give other people the chance and the time to correct the narrative that they have made about themselves, about their perception of the world, rather than saying, “This is the narrative of a rapist, let’s correct it.” That isn’t my focus or my interest. My interest is always about the victim of the trauma, the survivor of the trauma, and the narratives they tell themselves.
You famously turned down a $1 million Netflix offer in pursuit of full creative control, and you’ve spoken openly about your experiences with your show Chewing Gum, on which you didn’t have that. Going into this series, what did you want to do differently?
My commissioners, the BBC and HBO, listened to me and gave me time, gave me attention, gave me space to grow and change my mind. I went into the process of making the show with that mentality. Because of the way I was treated, I think I was able to treat other people with that same care and mindfulness and also have an element of play. When we went to L.A. to pitch the show, I went with my co-producers, Roberto Troni and Philip Clarke. I had never been to Santa Monica before, and we went to the beach, and we took our shoes off and put our feet in the water and we played. I also tried to bring that same sense of play to the set [with] the crew, the cast, everybody. It was fucking hard work, but also we played. When we had a couple of days off, we went and we had drinks and got incredibly drunk.
As a writer-director-actor, do you find that you need a buffer between prepping a scene and performing it? Do you see all of your roles as part of a cohesive whole or do you have to mentally separate them?
I don’t really have any choice in the matter when it comes to that. While I’m being costumed and fitted for Arabella, someone has a question about set design. You’re always doing all the jobs, and there is no, “Let’s do it like this, it might work better for me.” It’s all systems go, go, go. And it’s manic! I don’t know any other version, but I really enjoyed it. It’s so much that you can only smile and laugh and crack on with it. This is so crazy and so intense that we have to realize that this is an incredible experience. This is so hard, but also, oh my God, who gets to do this? That was on my mind every day.
How are you feeling in the wake of I May Destroy You’s nine Emmy nominations and all of the attention that comes with that?
It’s made my team over the moon. It’s made England delighted, it’s made Ghana delighted, it’s made everybody so happy — and me. Obviously, my biggest euphoria comes from either the writing process, playing with the cast, with the crew, with the show airing and meeting the audience. The euphoria from all of that is the prize for me. But also, it’s delightful. I hope I get to go [to the Emmys] and meet the people that created the other shows that I fucking loved to watch over the last year.