Michaela Coel

Michaela Coel (born October 1, 1987, London, England) British screenwriter, actress, and producer who gained acclaim for the award-winning television series Chewing Gum (2015–17) and I May Destroy You (2020), both of which she wrote, starred in, and produced. For the latter she became the first Black woman to win an Emmy Award for outstanding writing in a limited television series.

Early life and education

Coel was born Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson to Ghanaian immigrants who separated before she was born. She and her elder sister were raised by their mother in a council housing estate, a form of British public housing, in east London. As one of the few Black residents in the estate and the only Black student in her class at primary school, Boakye-Collinson often felt isolated. When she was 18 years old, she became a devout Pentecostal Christian and began performing poetry about her faith at open mics around London. In one of her performances, “Sorry I’m a Christian,” Boakye-Collinson told potential lovers that she is saving herself for Jesus.

Boakye-Collinson enrolled at the University of Birmingham in the West Midlands of England but quit after three weeks. She later returned to study English before dropping out again after a year. Through her poetry performances, she met Ché Walker, a playwright and director who encouraged her to take one of his master classes. This eventually led her in 2009 to begin studying acting at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London. She was the first Black woman to be admitted to the school in five years. That same year she participated in a summer program at London’s Talawa Theatre Company, the oldest Black theater group in the United Kingdom. About this time, she stopped practicing Christianity and adopted the surname Coel for professional reasons.

Chewing Gum

At Guildhall, Coel’s graduation project was an autobiographical play, Chewing Gum Dreams (2012), centered on Tracey, a 14-year-old schoolgirl who lives in a working-class estate. Coel played all the characters during performances in London, including at the Yard Theatre, the Bush Theatre, and the National Theatre. At the National, the play’s ribald and outlandish dialogue caught the attention of British television executives. In 2015 the play was turned into the sitcom Chewing Gum, with Coel serving as executive producer. In the television series Tracey comes from a Pentecostal family and is desperately trying to lose her virginity. The show earned Coel critical accolades and numerous awards, including a BAFTA Award for best female performance in a comedy program and two Royal Television Society awards in the breakthrough and comedy performance categories.

Acting roles in the 2010s

Meanwhile, Coel also acted in other projects, including a modern-dress production of Euripides’ Medea at the National Theatre in 2014, two episodes (2016 and 2017) of the television series Black Mirror, and the film Star Wars: Episode VIII–The Last Jedi (2017). In 2018 she landed the lead role in the thriller series Black Earth Rising alongside John Goodman and starred in the film Been So Long, which was written by Walker.

James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture

In 2018 Coel was invited to deliver the keynote James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival. She was the first Black woman to headline the event, and her speech became celebrated for its frank comments about race, class, and gender. She also revealed that she had been drugged and raped while working on the second season of Chewing Gum and experienced incidents of racism while attending Guildhall.

I May Destroy You

After the MacTaggart Lecture, Coel wrote the groundbreaking series I May Destroy You, which aired in 2020. It starred Coel as Arabella, a young Londoner who navigates issues of sexual violence, consent, and trauma after she is sexually assaulted during a night out with friends. The series, which Coel codirected and executive produced, was lauded for its complex, realistic portrait of the aftermath of rape and for centering the experiences of Black women and LGBTQ characters.

The show’s success led to Coel’s being included on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of 2020. The next year, in addition to her history-making Emmy win, Coel also won a BAFTA for leading actress, an Independent Spirit Award for best new scripted series, and an Image Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for outstanding writing in a comedy series.

Other projects from the 2020s

In 2021 Coel published an expanded version of her MacTaggart Lecture as Misfits: A Personal Manifesto, and in 2022 she appeared in the blockbuster film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. That same year she and her I May Destroy You costar Paapa Essiedu received a public apology from Guildhall for the racism they had experienced while attending the school, and Coel was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a London-based charity supporting writers and readers. In addition, Coel cohosted the 2023 Met Gala, the annual benefit for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.