“Can you believe?” boggles Michaela Coel. “It’s been four years since I May Destroy You came out?” Yet she tells me that “still now, every day” she has some small encounter with somebody who feels grateful to her for creating a show that brought uncomfortable but essential conversations around rape and sexual consent into the mainstream.
Although Coel won a Bafta for her 2015-17 E4 series Chewing Gum, had a small role in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) and starred in 2018 drama Black Earth Rising, it was the Emmy Award-winning IMDY that made her a household name, landing her spots on both Time magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People and Vogue’s list of influential women. Here was a working-class writer speaking truth to power, with striking style and fierce conviction.
Her audience knew that the 2020 series came from personal experience. In 2018, Coel gave a speech in which she described her experience of being drugged and raped by a stranger while working on the script for Chewing Gum.
“Sometimes,” says the 36-year-old writer-actor-director, “it’ll just be a look from a person on the street. But I can feel something grateful and connected in that smile as they pass, because I’d taken issues that were going on, quietly, in so many people’s lives, and put them through a megaphone.” She pauses. “Now I feel speechless by that response of love.”
Ironic talking about moral compass during an interview with the telegraph.
She does such good work. “I May Destroy You” had such an impact on me. And clearly came from a place of emotional honesty that I really respect.
While I love her work, it does stick in my craw that the discussion of a “moral compass” comes from a person who is in a position to turn down $1m when so many people are barely making ends meet.
The film industry folks are really struggling right now due to the strikes… this is quite tone deaf. The timing could have been better.
And yes, I know she’s British and they didn’t strike. But a lot of British actors are also SAG/AFTRA on this side of the pond too.
I’m glad she was in a privileged enough position where she didn’t need a million dollars.
That doesn’t make her a better person than the people who aren’t privileged enough to knock back a million dollars.
6 comments
**From The Telegraph:**
“Can you believe?” boggles Michaela Coel. “It’s been four years since I May Destroy You came out?” Yet she tells me that “still now, every day” she has some small encounter with somebody who feels grateful to her for creating a show that brought uncomfortable but essential conversations around rape and sexual consent into the mainstream.
Although Coel won a Bafta for her 2015-17 E4 series Chewing Gum, had a small role in Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) and starred in 2018 drama Black Earth Rising, it was the Emmy Award-winning IMDY that made her a household name, landing her spots on both Time magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People and Vogue’s list of influential women. Here was a working-class writer speaking truth to power, with striking style and fierce conviction.
Her audience knew that the 2020 series came from personal experience. In 2018, Coel gave a speech in which she described her experience of being drugged and raped by a stranger while working on the script for Chewing Gum.
“Sometimes,” says the 36-year-old writer-actor-director, “it’ll just be a look from a person on the street. But I can feel something grateful and connected in that smile as they pass, because I’d taken issues that were going on, quietly, in so many people’s lives, and put them through a megaphone.” She pauses. “Now I feel speechless by that response of love.”
**Read the full article here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2023/10/15/michaela-coel-interview/**
Too bad. I would have loved to read this article.
Ironic talking about moral compass during an interview with the telegraph.
She does such good work. “I May Destroy You” had such an impact on me. And clearly came from a place of emotional honesty that I really respect.
While I love her work, it does stick in my craw that the discussion of a “moral compass” comes from a person who is in a position to turn down $1m when so many people are barely making ends meet.
The film industry folks are really struggling right now due to the strikes… this is quite tone deaf. The timing could have been better.
And yes, I know she’s British and they didn’t strike. But a lot of British actors are also SAG/AFTRA on this side of the pond too.
I’m glad she was in a privileged enough position where she didn’t need a million dollars.
That doesn’t make her a better person than the people who aren’t privileged enough to knock back a million dollars.