“I was trying to be someone else & actually failing,” Coel says. “I could feel, ‘This isn’t good. I can do better than this.’ So I thought, ‘Let me, for once, tell my story.”
“I started writing memories from secondary school & found I could formulate a story from that,” Coel reflected on her time at an East London school where she grew up & studied. Though she had a clear gift for writing & poetry, she was also very good at giving up on things at the time, dropping out of college & university a couple of times.
After entering the world of performing arts, Coel would often find herself in rooms where she was the only person who looked like her, a ‘Mistfit’ one could say. Upon realising, she’d start “sweating from every pore in my body. I think it’s that insecurity of being from a very working-class background, that anxiety: ‘I shouldn’t be here.’”
Coel was also the first black woman enrolled in the school in half a decade.
Unlike American shows in the late 90s/early 2000s, British tv didn’t really have anything she or any black person could relate to, to draw inspiration from, it seemed very much a closed door, which was reflected in the nature of her surroundings in performing arts.
“I didn’t think working in media was a possibility for me,” she stated a few years back & that if she could change one thing now, it would be raising awareness that jobs like hers (lead actress, directing, & writing) are possible for marginalised voices. “People don’t know these jobs exist – especially when you go to schools like mine.”
Today, Coel has had quite a journey since the days of performing arts school. Her work ethic & tenacity led to her success with shows such as chewing gum — which she wrote & stared in, a rare feat in the UK — to the rollercoaster ride she experienced in bringing to life after 191 drafts, the phenomenal, mass award-winning series ‘I may destroy you.’ Coel continues to prove that the initial walls & limitations that almost made her believe that she really didn’t belong can be moved.
The importance of having voices from people of colour authoring the narratives, rather than simply turning up as talent is something she strongly stresses.
In what’s already been a very special year, her debut book titled ‘Misfits: A Personal Manifesto’ is set to be published in the United Kingdom & the United States this September 7th along with being slated for a trip to Wakanda in the upcoming Black Panther: Wakanda Forever marvel movie.
On the topic of her book, UK publisher Ebury, says that it is “a powerful manifesto on how speaking your truth & owning your differences can transform your life.”
“I think you just have to do you, whatever that is, & not feel like you have to be a certain way for other people to like you.”
Michaela Coel
Sources: Quotes & research gathered from interviews by The Guardian and Entertainment weekly. Main Image courtesy of HBO)
