Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Emmy Insider
The Emmy race has begun!
Vulture is taking a close look at the contenders until nomination-round voting closes on July 13.
Michaela Coel is not a Christian anymore, but the spirit has never left her.
The Bible is the reason she started writing.
Her first poem, Beautiful, was inspired by Psalm 139, and its still as clear as crystal.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made, she recites.
I cant name what that is, because Im never going to know, she says.
I open myself up as a vessel for the story to come through.
She writes until there is no time left to write.
My team acts as if its a great takeaway, like, Wow, this food is really interesting!
What are these aromas?
There is no writers room; she is her own fuel and engine.
As she imagines her onscreen character, Arabella, she considers her own life and the lives of others.
Watching it is like entering a pool of Coels consciousness.
Theres an expansive, long-limbed, genre-casual energy held together by Coels performance.
In the pilot, like Coel, Arabella comes to after her assault, while working on her manuscript.
She recites aloud from the passage:
We became the generation interested in ourselves.
We have no problem with self-involvement.
We are the generation that decided we should be looked at.
No more to documentaries of undiscovered worlds, of undercover investigations, of unreported people.
We are the generation that decided, if you wont look at us, well look at ourselves.
Weve been doing that.
Dont forget: Also look in.
Coel recently boughtan apartment, the first she has ever owned.
She takes me outside to the balcony to see where a church spire crests overhead.
It feels like a wink to my life, she says, laughing.
Perhaps its too convenient a metaphor, but Coel grew up on a boundary.
They were one of a handful of Black families in the building.
She had found her crew; they werent popular but not outcasts, either.
They were the people who were not cool enough to love or hate, she says.
We were just there having fun, making up songs, being stupid.
There was a lot of like, So what?
I dont have name-brand trainers.
I know my lips are big, she says.
I was cussing myself out to make people laugh.
She became a convert to the faith, which demands a full mind-to-body-to-soul commitment.
He was struck by the wisdom and clarity that came through in her work at such a young age.
There was a tremendous self-belief, Walker says.
She was very watchful, like she was seeing all the things you dont want anyone else to see.
When Coel entered the school in fall 2009, acting began to replace the church as her primary calling.
The DSD ultimately had 41 installments, each with its own narrative arc.
She absolutely adored Shakespeare and would do him 24/7.
She was less enamored with the other stuff: the Restoration comedies and stuffy period dramas.
Coel listened and held back tears; shed never heard this before.
The professor theorized the anger must be a survival mechanism.
Coel wrote about the experience on her blog, which became increasingly controversial among the students.
Some of them asked the teachers to call an emergency meeting to discuss it.
They began by professing concern for Coel but quickly became defensive about their own race and class.
There were other surreal moments of racism throughout her time at the school.
It was just a really confusing place to be as Black people, says Essiedu.
Coel was the only one who went to the latter side.
The way I looked at myself and my life shifted, she says.
Ive never had a garden.
We never grew up like that.
My family has rented our whole lives.
Youre always on fragile ground because its not yours.
It gives you a drive, an ambition, because nothing is certain.
That is a resilience no person with stability can replicate.
You cant forge it.
Theres blessings to the struggle.
They had the option of performing classic texts or original material.
They moved in the way that we moved.
It was the first time Id done something that made me feel free as an actor.
Theres a darkness beneath the everydayness of the world that can catch you like an undertow.
I see a demon.
Its stuck, underneath a really thin layer of his skin, and its just staring at me.
Youd be like,This is amazing and gross at the same time.
I dont remember specifics; I just remember the feeling, Coel says of the early performances.
When I perform, its like a ride, and Im very in the ride.
My God, I loved it, and I loved it because it was also understood.
Once the word is connected to you, its connected to you.
The words are beautiful, and some lines still move her to tears.
The last scene ends with Tracey and Candice in the hospital.
Candice has just given birth, and Aaron is nowhere to be found.
Both of them are too teenaged to be dealing with whats to come.
And Im gonna take care of my home.
The titleChewing Gum Dreamscame from a poem Coel wrote during drama school.
She said, Holy shit, yes, of course.
Not until after an arduous round of drafting did a friend ask Coel what the script editor was doing.
She replied, Whats a script editor?
So finally Fremantle hired one who helped Coel understand the beats and structure of a broadcast sitcom.
The dark parts were still there, just tucked into the corners.
Still, she loves what she made, and audiences did too.
Her lack of experience does nothing to dampen her enthusiasm.
When the show premiered in the U.K. on Channel 4 in 2015, Coel became a star.
The following year she won two BAFTA awards one for writing, the other for performance in a comedy.
The show was picked up by Netflix, where she gained a broader (American) audience.
On one hand, its about a Christian girl who wants to lose her virginity, she says.
You come to my trailer whenever you need something, but I cant accessyou.
In that moment, I was like, This is disgraceful, she recalls.
While the mess is going on outside, you sat here, clueless.
(The production ordered more trailers.)
She asked a producer to speak to him, but the next day it happened again.
She asked to sidebar with Marshall, and he lost his temper.
They made her a co-producer instead.
I think it has to do with greed, she adds.
Her friends put it less diplomatically.
Youre trying to pawn her off with this little crumb, says Kirwan.
In 2018, Coel threwa hand grenade into the British television industry.
The wizards of Oz.
She chose her words precisely, like silver arrows sailing to hit their targets.
Is it important that voices used to interruption get the experience of writing something without interference at least once?
People were really shook, recalls Kirwan.
I know some people were annoyed by how it wasnt very British.
No one discusses assault, drugs, or the lack of support.
You just smile through it, and behind closed doors, you cry into your pillow.
It was pretty hard to hear because weve been complicit, myself included.
That was an incredibly ballsy thing to do to stand up and say, This is what I need.
Are you good enough to give it to me?
Not Am I good enough to deserve the kind of treatment that I want?
This time around, she wanted transparency from her collaborators.
She learned the power of saying no.
(Something about it didnt feel clean.)
But when she learned they wouldnt allow her to retain any percentage of the copyright, she said no.
No amount was worth that.
Throughout the fallout with Netflix and CAA, Coel asked questions relentlessly.
It may be business as usual, but is it right?
There was just silence on the phone, she says.
And she said, Its not how we do things here.
Nobody does that, its not a big deal.
She bargained down to 2 percent, one percent, and finally 0.5 percent.
The woman said shed have to run it up the chain.
Then she paused and said, Michaela?
I just want you to know Im really proud of you.
Youre doing the right thing.
And she hung up.
And then she said those words to me, and I finally realized Imnot crazy.Thisis crazy.
(HBO came on as a co-producer during development.)
She took a beat.
Then she went with it.
Its an amazing email.
She saw other white people scoff at the biker as she passed.
She caught up to her and yelled out, I appreciate you, sis!
Empathy is a daily practice for Coel, something you do like meditation or yoga.
It keeps her mind nimble.
I spent a lot of my life asking, pleading, hoping for empathy, she says.
It only feels fitting for me to make a run at do the same thing.
I think it crosses these very stubborn wirings in our brain.
Its particularly true for Arabella, whose obsession with meting out justice on social media eventually consumes her.
Coel hasnt been promoting the show much on social media in part because she has mostly left the apps.
She felt Twitter was polarizing her views and flattening her brain.
She didnt want to be promoting a show during a political crisis but understood she needed to speak.
So she went for a run, meditated, and wrote apoemfor Floyd and his mother.
I learned that when I am traumatized, I make a line and I say dangerous/safe, says Coel.
But the line is not real.
I ask her to be more specific, and she admits that her mind immediately goes to race.
Its tricky: How do you empathize with a racist, especially in this climate?
I have to try and understand why you dont see racism, she says.
Its not because youre evil.
Of course you dont see it.
Youre one of the people who dont see it.
Its amazing that there are white people who see it.
Still, she concedes, maybe shes wrong.
She recognized the politeness in his voice and how it didnt matter.
How do you begin to vanquish this cancer called white supremacy that infects people and eats their souls?
How do you punch a cloud?
Themacroand thestructuraloverwhelm her, so she tends to zero in on individual relationships.
A part of me yearns to give people their right to life, Coel says.
The act of empathy, she says, is really about her own well-being.
It is how she has moved forward as an artist and a person.
This makesmefeel better, she says.
Daring to empathize, daring to help other people as well as being helped, it will doyougood.
The unfamiliarity makes her vulnerable, soft, and spongy open to possibilities.
She was untethered from the thrum of London life and could be alone with her scripts.
Part of it is being closer to the rhythms of nature.
It can be expansive.
Initially, for some people, it can be frightening.
Coel asked if it was going to end in murder, and spoiler alert McCaughan replied that it does.
Im kind of trying not to do that, said Coel.
She threw various scenarios at McCaughan to gauge her reaction.
Must there be bloodshed for there to be justice?
Coel worried the storm would tear the house asunder and texted McCaughan asking if everything would be okay.
She assured her she would be safe.
Still, Coel was awake and afraid.
They sat on the couch and watched a PBS documentary about owls named Luna and Lily.
Coel rested her head on McCaughans shoulder.
We were two people who were really into being free, letting go, says Coel.
We both started crying because it felt amazing to be able to feel relaxed with somebody.
you could go about your daily life having never experienced connection with different people from different places.
In that moment, she thought about Tracey Gordon and her zest for life.
She thought about Arabella and how she was trying to come back after almost losing herself.
She thought about how to end Arabellas story and give her some solace.
If she could do it for Arabella, maybe she could do it for herself.
What does closure look like?
Its not that itends.
She wanted viewers to come away from the series the way she does when she completes a draft.
How to describe it?
There are no words.
Its not singular; it is ineffable.
But she will try.
Its a very small feeling, she says.
I finished, and the sadness of finishing and the enjoyment of having done it sit side by side.
My version of this is life.
Im like, Oh, it was so fun!
She gasps, her eyes bright and brimming with tears.
Look at all the things that I learned!
And those painful bits!
Now Im at the end and she gasps again, breathless its sad to go.
