The New York Times - USA - Arts & Leisure (2020-07-26)

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JULY 26, 2020 AR 3

Moodboard

I MAY DESTROY YOU

‘Black Earth Rising’

Coel starred in this 2018 Netflix

series as Kate, a Londoner whose

discovery about her heritage com-

plicates how she sees herself and

her place in the world. It was only

when she watched the series that

Coel understood how the show’s

creator, Hugo Blick, used Kate’s

fight to accept a new part of her

identity to interrogate how we

define ourselves.

“This was crucial to how I crafted

Arabella, how I crafted every single

character in ‘I May Destroy You,’ ”

Coel said, “because there is a duality

that exists within every character.”

Arabella’s assault forces her to

consider her identity as a woman,

with all the dangers associated with

that gender, when previously she

had been “busy being Black and

poor,” as she said in Episode 7. She’s

always been a woman too, but “she

never saw it,” Coel explained, “be-

cause she was choosing where she

put the character of trauma.” After

joining an all-female support group

for survivors of sexual assault and

finding comfort in their shared

experiences, Arabella wondered,

“Am I too late to serve this tribe

called women?”

We see the internal worlds of

Arabella’s friends, too: Terry

(Weruche Opia) is the friend har-

boring a secret, while Kwame

(Paapa Essiedu) challenges ster-

eotypes about what it means to be a

strong Black man, and what it

means to be a gay man.

‘Leviathan’ and ‘Loveless’

Coel found more inspiration for her

characters’ dualities in two of An-

drey Zvyagintsev’s films. The 2014

“Leviathan” tells the story of Kolya,

a mechanic (Alexey Serebryakov)

who is fighting to save his home

from a mayor who wants the land.

Kolya assaults his wife, and at the

end of the film he is wrongly con-

victed of her murder. In a court

scene, he listens as the official

reads, in rapid-fire and legal lan-

guage, his sentence of 15 years. In

that moment, facing the members of

the court and standing alone with

his eyes downcast, Kolya “is pro-

cessing that the world sees him as

worthy of a criminal conviction,”

Coel said. She mimicked that scene

in Episode 8, when the police officer

reads aloud an update to Arabella’s

case in alienating legalese.

When she watched “Loveless,”

Zvyagintsev’s 2017 film about a

divorcing couple, Coel realized the

director was telling the same story

of internal contradictions as in

“Leviathan,” but in a different way.

In “Loveless,” the wife, Zhenya

(Maryana Spivak), tells her es-

tranged mother “You’re God and the

devil rolled into one.” This line really

spoke to Coel. “I enjoy constantly

being aware of all of those parts

within myself,” she said, “because it

makes sure I keep control of the

devil in me. There’s one in all of us,

so if you’re aware of it, you can

manage it and be a socially respon-

sible human being.” In the Hallow-

een episode, Coel draws on this

imagery.

Calvin Klein’s Euphoria

Episode 5 opens with Arabella

waking up in bed with Zain (Karan

Gill), the first man she has slept

with since having her drink spiked.

Arabella remembers having sex

with Biagio (Marouane Zotti) in

Italy, memories that are all soft

focus, beautiful light and mutual

pleasure. Coel found perfume ads on

the internet, including a Calvin

Klein Euphoria ad from 2015 that

has the tagline “free the fantasy.”

Coel wanted Arabella’s reminiscing

to feel like the ad, a “perfect roman-

tic scene,” before Zain wakes up and

she is brought back to reality.

‘The Law Is a White Dog’

In Episode 6 of “I May Destroy

You,” we flash back to 2004, when

Theo (Harriet Webb), Terry and

Arabella are all teenagers at high

school together, and learn why

Terry doesn’t trust Theo.

While Coel drew significantly on

her own experiences at a public

school, she was also reading “The

Law Is a White Dog: How Legal

Rituals Make and Unmake Persons”

by Colin Dayan. A law professor at

Vanderbilt University, Dayan looks

at how the past haunts the law,

imprisoning and enslaving specific

groups of people and — legally —

depriving them of their personhood.

Coel found parallels between these

ideas and the way Arabella and her

classmates group themselves by

race. “There’s something about

school at that time, in very ne-

glected boroughs in the U.K., that

felt like a prison system,” Coel said.

She also spent some time looking

at images of the sparse concrete

and repeated block shapes of many

London schools. “It almost felt like,

how could you not have a school

that ended up the way they did

when you put them in a building so

brutal,” she said.

‘Stone Mattress’

When she pitched “I May Destroy

You” to HBO, Coel assured the

network that she could provide “the

Hollywood ending.” In this context,

that meant Arabella finding the man

who raped her, and hurting him the

way he’d hurt her. In November

2018, when she was writing the final

episode, someone suggested she

read Margaret Atwood’s short story

“Stone Mattress,” in which a woman

on a cruise kills the man who sexu-

ally assaulted her as a teenager. “I

remember thinking, ‘I see that this

satisfies people, but it doesn’t satisfy

me,’ ” Coel said. “ ‘How does this

woman carry this new label of being

a murderer?’ ”

Still, she took people’s desire for

revenge finales — a mind-set of

“tables turning, it’s our time, see

how you like it,” she said — into

account as she shaped the 12th and

final episode.

Internet Searches Also Lead to Inspiration

Before she sent scripts
to the BBC, Michaela
Coel collected images
online. While her series
“I May Destroy You”
ostensibly follows the
London-based writer
Arabella (Coel) as she
processes a sexual
assault, the series also
confronts the frames
through which we see
ourselves and each
other. The early PDFs
she sent to the BBC,
which included photos
of gay Black couples
and yoga retreats for
women of color, held
only some of the
inspirations Coel drew
on for the series. Over
Zoom, the
multihyphenate creator
broke down her
influences for “I May
Destroy You.”
ELEANOR STANFORD

‘BLACK EARTH

RISING’

‘THE LAW IS A

WHITE DOG’

CALVIN KLEIN’S

EUPHORIA

‘LOVELESS’

‘LEVIATHAN’

‘STONE MATTRESS’

COEL BY NATALIE SEERY/HBOPHOTOGRAPH OF MICHAELA

IN SELECT THEATERS FRIDAY

Visit RebuildingParadise.film

for showtimes and listings

(Note: Some theaters will be offering virtual tickets)

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTARY FILMS PRESENTS

DIRECTED BYRON HOWARD

“A SINCERE AND SKILLFULLY ASSEMBLED

TRIBUTE TO A COMMUNITY’S FORTITUDE”

-THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER