49
July 2020 | REDONLINE.CO.UKred woman
ichaela Coel
has this
lockdown
thing really
locked down.
As the rest of
us clunkily
adjust to the
new normal, Coel’s already something of a pro.
She’s been isolating at home for weeks before
we speak, doing edits of her new TV show, and
is pretty much used to this solitary life we now
lead – just never before during a pandemic.
‘I think, because I write, this feels really normal,’
she tells me over a Zoom call from her east London
flat, where she’s holed up alone. ‘I sometimes travelreally far to write, where I have to walk like an
hour and a half to get to the supermarket. I’ve
written in places where I haven’t seen another
human being for two and a half weeks, so this feels
very familiar!’ What hadn’t been familiar up to this
point was a Zoom video call. ‘Doing this meant
I had a reason to put on make-up,’ she laughs.
It’s not just the edits for her new series that are
keeping Coel busy, she’s just started an online
course run by Yale university on the science of
wellbeing. She’s also downloaded an app to help
her learn how to do the splits, but she’s having
second thoughts. ‘My friend sent me
it,’ she says. ‘By the time you finish,
you’re supposed to be able to do the
splits. But it’s really hard. I was like,
“Mate, this is a bit much, actually. It’s
really painful.” I’m on day three, butit’s too much. I’m worried I’m going to tear my vital
bits. It’s more serious than I thought it was.’
It’s this amusing honesty that propelled Coel on
to the comedy scene with Chewing Gum just five
years ago. The production began life as Chewing
Gum Dreams, her one-woman end-of-year show at
London’s Guildhall School in 2012, based loosely
on her experiences growing up in a Ghanaian
family in east London. It was soon picked up by
Channel 4, and the utterly brilliant comedy created
by, written by and starring Coel bagged two
BAFTAs and much critical acclaim.
Her latest offering, while also autobiographical
in nature, comes from
a darker place. I May
Destroy You, the BBC
drama she has written
and starred in, is based
on a sexual assault
she experienced
several years ago.
Before this interview,
I watch the first three
episodes. Coel plays
Arabella Essiedu,
a self-assured and
carefree writer whose life is thrown into disarray
when her drink is spiked with a date rape drug.
As we might expect from Coel, it’s sharp, smart
and witty. But the gut punch still manages to
blindside me, and stays long after the credits roll.
It’s a frank and provocative portrayal of dating
and consent. When I ask where she found the
strength to take back control of that narrative,
Coel is matter-of-fact about reclaiming her power.
‘It almost feels like something that I impulsively
did,’ she admits. She says while sitting in the police
station with a friend shortly after the attack, she
started making notes. ‘It was a way
of separating myself from what
happened, but also separating myself
in order to understand what happened
and to find some meaning in it; in
something that’s really purposeless,’
says Coel. ‘By the end of the series,
it’s very clear that this goes way out
of the realms of any sort of reality,
and it’s very fictional. But it helps.’COEL
M
‘THE MINUTE
I’VE WRITTEN
SOMETHING,
I WANT IT TO BE
EVERYWHERE’