50
July 2020 | REDONLINE.CO.UKred woman
She describes the writing process as all-consuming,
and admits she’s removed from the experience
when she watches the rushes back as her character
Arabella: ‘I talk about “her”, it’s a different person.’
I May Destroy You has taken up the past two and
a half years of Coel’s life (alongside parts in two
episodes of Black Mirror and the lead role in the
acclaimed series Black Earth Rising). She says
creating a TV show is a bit like having a child.
‘I do see it very much as like a pregnancy and
a labour,’ she laughs. ‘Then, when the show comes
out, you do the hair, you iron the skirt and you send
the child to school, and people might not like her,
but you know she’s got to grow up, and off she
goes. It’s like when your child graduates and
you get to stop worrying about them. “Yeah,
you’re not my problem any more.
Get out, go and survive on your
own two feet.” The minute
I’ve written something,
I want it to be everywhere.’
On the subject of successful
offspring, it comes as no surprise
that Coel’s mother is her biggest
fan. She’s a mental health nurse
for the NHS and remains a huge
presence in Coel’s life (she also happens to live
10 minutes down the road). ‘We’ve always been
really close, and she sacrificed her entire life to
raise me and my sister,’ she reveals. ‘She’s amazing.
Sometimes, when I call her, she’s emotional
because of the national support [for the NHS].
She’s so touched. She says the claps touch her soul.’
As well as being a front-line hero, Coel’s mum
makes her red-carpet looks in traditional kente
cloth, including the incredible dress she wore on
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK last year when she was
a guest judge. She claps excitedly when I ask about
the gig, not only because she’s a big fan of the
show but also, as it turns out, she was drafted
in as a replacement for Naomi Campbell.
‘She cancelled last minute and I was like, “Yeah!
I’ll step in!” They said, “Michaela, Naomi’s
cancelled, and they’re wondering if you...”
They didn’t need to finish the sentence.’
Writing, producing and starring in her own
TV show brings the inevitable comparisons
with Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge, another
one-woman powerhouse. ‘If people see a
commonality due to our gender, I’m happy to be
circled into a group with Phoebe Waller-Bridge,’
she explains. ‘It’s the same way of thinking that
leads people to group me with black female
creative Issa Rae, who is a dear friend, because
she is black and female. However, one group
I am not grouped with enough are female
creatives who have emerged from working-class
backgrounds. This is because there aren’t enough
of us making work in this country yet.’
Who does she look up to within the
industry? Coel reels off a list of people
she’s keen to praise. ‘Hugo Blick,
who wrote Black Earth Rising.
I’d always been a fan. A Russian
filmmaker called Andrey Zvyagintsev;
Janelle Monáe; Theresa Ikoko, who
directed Rocks; Nida Manzoor,
who is a director and writer creating
a comedy for Channel 4; and my
co-director on I May Destroy You, Audrey Cooke.’
Seeing as I May Destroy You is the second
project she’s created, written and starred in after
Chewing Gum, I wonder if she feels pressure to
have another hit on her hands. ‘To win a couple
of BAFTAs for that was absolutely bonkers’, she
laughs. ‘I feel like I’m still living off the high
of those celebrations, even though they were four
years ago. I’ve never felt like I’ve got to do the next
thing. Sometimes, it can be hard, but it’s okay to
disappear. It’s good to disappear. I wonder if that’s
the writer in me.’ She tells me her work ‘consumes’
her, and she can write for 30 hours straight. But,
at the moment, she’s concentrating on ‘living in
the now’, whatever version that is next.
‘The real world is cool, you know?’ she says,
with such enthusiasm you can’t help hang on
every single word. ‘You’re a small thing in this big
world. It’s scary when you’ve forgotten what your
place is, but when you find it again, it’s really
beautiful to just sit there and be a tiny part of it.’‘SOMETIMES IT
CAN BE HARD,
BUT IT’S OKAY
TO DI SA PPE A R’
I May Destroy You is coming to BBC One in June WORDS:^JE
N^CRO
THERS.^PHO
TOGRAPHY:^ T
RUNKA
RCHIVE