The New Yorker Radio Hour - Michaela Coel on Making “I May Destroy You”

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

The protagonist of “I May Destroy You,” a young woman named Arabella, has her drink spiked at a party and discovers afterward that she has been assaulted. She spends the rest of the show untangling what happened to her. And yet the HBO series is not a crime drama but a nuanced and sometimes comedic exploration of the emotional toll of surviving assault. The series—written and directed by, and starring, Michaela Coel—is based on Coel’s own experience. Coel tells Doreen St. Félix that she was assaulted while working on the second season of her celebrated BBC show “Chewing Gum.” She took notes about what happened, and some of that material made it into the new show, while other aspects are fictional. Of Arabella, who often wears a pink wig, Coel says, “You don't know where she begins and where I end.”  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Michaela Cole's television career took off really fast in 2016, with the debut of a show that she created called Chewing Gum. It was a goofy, cringy comedy about a young woman from a religious background, trying desperately to lose her virginity. Chewing gum seemed, at least in some regards, to Mirror Cole's own life. and it won her prestigious BAFTA Award, Britain's equivalent of an Emmy or an Oscar. I May Destroy You is the title of Michaela Cole's new show, which is on HBO. She wrote and directed the series, and she stars in it too, playing a young writer living in East London.

The story is also drawn from Cole's own life, but the subject matter is much darker. And the assault, you recall? The thing in my head. Yes. Yeah, I wouldn't... Because now you're calling it something that I never. Do you see anyone else in this memory? You can't call it a memory.

Okay, other than the man in my head. Michaela Cole spoke last week with our TV critic, Doreen St. Felix. So I'd like to just kind of start off by asking, how does it feel to have it out in the world? It's strange because it's out, but it isn't fully aired. So with only, I think in America, you guys are going to watch episode five tonight. Yes. And so I describe it as like being in the middle of giving birth to a child and like the head is out, but the rest of the body is still.

It's crowning. Yeah. So people are like, how does it be? You're a mom now and I'm like, it's still on the way. I'm kind of like, you know, I think that the show morphs. So the relationship between the show and the audience is on a journey in and of itself, isn't it? It's almost like the show continues to be written in its meeting of the audience. So I don't even know how to feel right now.

It's a lot to process. quite surreal, quite overwhelming. And I'd say as an audience member, you feel the surreality of being trusted unilaterally by the creator of this show. You know, with the pilot, it begins and you think, oh, this is like a hangout kind of television show. We meet a young black woman writer named Arabella.

She is a bit of a struggling artist, but she's also a total carefree creative. and the first episode is working on a book draft, and she decides to take a break from it, and she goes to a bar where she meets some friends. And the episode ends with some blurred action in which we see Arabella kind of lose consciousness, and it isn't until the next episode that Arabella and the audience, of course,

realizes that her drink was spiked, and she was assaulted at the bar. And the show is semi-fiction. It's an auto fiction. And I'm sorry about your experience. And I'd love to hear, you know, when did you decide that you wanted to write about this? Yes. And thank you very much for saying, sorry, I appreciate that.

I decided, I guess it wasn't much of a decision. It was sort of a instinctive note-taking because everything was, so strange, you know. I remember being in the detective room. This is after my drink, similar to Arabella's story was spiked when I took a break from work to meet a friend. And within 24 hours, I'd sort of finally understood that something was very bad, that something very bad had happened. So I sat in the room and we waited for the detective to come and my friend, was looking after me, a really lovely friend of mine and musician. And as I sat there, I remember feeling confused,

really like it was the beginning of a life ending. And I looked over to my friend, and he was playing Pokemon Go on his phone. And I remember thinking, this is so weird. And I wrote that down in my notes. Like, what is the word to describe that? idea, that image, that experience, and I like to write about things that feel absurd. And so I wrote it down in my notes. And I think it's a way, in a way for me to try to disengage from something that's quite traumatic, but also it's definitely a way for me to get closer to something

that's traumatic to try to edge closer to understand it. And I think, you know, both personally and also speaking to many of my friends who are survivors who are watching, I may destroy you, there's a feeling of uncanniness in that, you know, we're talking about surviving and we're kind of laughing about it because there is an absurdity to living in the world as someone who wants to continue their life but is now saddled. with this experience that causes all kinds of emotional reaction. How long did it take for you to get there, to feel comfort

and conveying that absurdity in the writing of the show? Well, I think I go round and round in circles, feeling comfort and then feeling like I'm in a state of shock at the fact that I'm sharing this story. And then I laugh about it because it's absurd. I think there is, it is absurd because I've always felt ready to share, which I think might be partly because the nature of the assault meant that I wasn't quite aware that something had happened. So it meant that I was just saying, yo, there's this thing in my head. What's that? And telling everybody because it didn't make any sense.

And so by the time it did make sense, I was already communicating about it, which I think was a very good thing. Also, I was put into therapy, I think within days of it happening. So, you know, before I could get to a place where I began to hide it, the rescue came very, very quickly, which is really, really lucky for me. How are you doing? I'm great, great, I'm great as long as I'm around people, when I'm alone. Flashbacks? Sometimes it gets a bit much

What do you do when it gets a bit much? I just make sure I'm around someone, anyone Yeah and if I'm not I say There are hungry children, there are hungry children There's a war in Syria, there's a war in Syria There's a war in Syria Or not everyone has a smartphone

No everyone has a smartphone Not everyone has a smartphone To remind myself of the bigger picture What's your relationship to Arabella? Does she torture you? Is she someone that you think is like you? Are there similarities? Are there differences beyond, you know, the plot, obviously, in the story?

You know, throughout the series, Arabella and I seem to be two beings that sometimes collide, sometimes run parallel to each other, sometimes are a mirror to each other. I'm aware that I have been like her at times, and I'm aware that I'm completely fictionalizing things that have never happened to me. You don't know where she begins and where I end, which is really fascinating, I think. Michaela Cole talking with the New Yorkers Doreen St. Felix. More in a minute.

So I want to shift a little bit to talk about the actual art of making a television show. When we say that I May Destroy You was created by Michaela Cole. We really mean it was created by Michaela Cole. Show running, directing, acting, writing. How does it work logistically, you know, in episodes that you're either co-directing or directing while also acting? You know, what is that like? And how is it to move from, in some ways, oppositional spaces? Yes. So I get, I arrive to work. I cycled most days. And I do my, hair and makeup early, very, very early, so that I have time to get to the set where we shoot,

to plan how we're going to shoot the scenes that we're shooting. So I meet my co-director there, and then the actors come on, and we rehearse the scene. Sometimes I'm in that scene. Sometimes I'm not in that scene. And then we shoot. I do not do something that I think a lot of people do, which is go and watch.

the monitor after every scene by minute, because acting is, you know, sometimes I have to go to emotional places and the idea of running back and forth to look at what I've done seems a little bit weird. And then at the end of the day, we meet up again to discuss how we're going to shoot the next day again. So it's a lot of discussing. And then I go home. And when I go home, I learn my lines for the next day, then do any rewrites that I have to do. And then do any rewrites that I have to do. for the scenes coming up. Often my execs will come down to set. At lunchtime we discuss things that come up.

It's often, you know, shoots are never perfect and budgets need to be discussed and I have to sign up on things. So it's a lot of, it's quite manic, it's quite manic, a lot of those discussions about budgets and take place while my sound man is fixing my microphone. So I have my arms in the sky, almost like a child being dressed by their mother. So my mic is being fitted while I'm discussing a problem that we have for next week

and the budget of the, we're losing a venue and all these sorts of things. So it's really, really manic. My brain is in 100 places at once. Can you tell us about the first time you began acting? Oh, well, the first time would be taking it all the way back. back to Bridewell Youth Theatre. So my, it was a theatre in the city of London. And my mum realised that they basically let your children go for free

if you were below a certain income. So my mum used that to go and clean. So she would send me and my sister to this drama school on a Saturday while she would do her cleaning work. And I remember being in a play called Iam, which was about a plague, enough that swept the UK, funny because we're in a global pandemic, but it was about a plague and this town called Iom did a very heroic thing by shutting off their borders and allowing the

plague to only spread among themselves. So they sacrificed themselves for the rest of Britain. So that was the play that I remember doing. And then I, you know, I think that's about 12. And then I went to school and I soon forgot about drama because nobody else was really doing anything like that. And then I became a poet and found my way back into drama through performance poetry. So that there was an element of performance and drama to the poetry. And a director, a lovely man called Shea Walker, saw me do a poem. And he said, you should become an actor. So he would teach me once a week at a master class he would do it Rada.

And he said you should go to apply for a long drama school three years. And he gave me a list and I got into drama school. That's my origins. And I've listened many times to the Taggart lecture that you've given, which is really wonderful. And in it you describe your experience at Gilt Hall, which was a drama school that you went to. And you were the only black student in your class, right? Only black woman in my class. The only black women in your class.

Right. And the experience there, did it get so bad that it maybe deterred you from pursuing the dream? Like, you know, how did you, we're talking about trauma and sexual trauma is not the only kind of trauma that exists. And it seems like your time there was marred by racism. Yes, and classism, I think. But didn't ever deter me. It's so strange. I think it's because I was born. into a racist world. I was born into a classist world. So these were things that I was carrying with me from birth. I think we are, aren't we? And so there was never any notion that the racism would stop me. The racism would traumatize me, yes, but it wouldn't stop me. And you end up, you know, towards the end of your career there, writing Chewing Gum Dreams, which is the source text for Chewing Gum.

I'd love to hear, you know, about the journey of adapting what was a one woman play in which you played many characters into this, like, I call, I think of Chewing Gum as a cringe comedy with darkness around its edges. So yeah, what was that? That's a good description. It's a real blur, if I'm being honest. I do remember definitely Googling how to write a TV show, which I think I also did for I May Destroy You. You know, here's the thing I would do. I would go to, there was a cafe.

It was under a hotel, and it was there for open 24 hours. and I went there so much that I became friends with the waiters and the waitresses and I would come in with my laptop and open my laptop and begin writing and they would come and bring me drinks or food and then they'd finish their shift and they'd go and then they'd come back from their shift and I'd be in the exact same place they'd go home get to sleep, come the next day and just discover me in the exact same spot writing and it was I describe it as

you know, in the dark trying to throw a dart on a dart board, it's all a blur. It really is all a blur of euphoria and exhaustion, much like this show, except more of a tussle to be heard and to get the vision across. And by Tussle, are you referring to what it was like working with the network? The production company, parts of it, parts of that and the network, yes, it was hard. I think also when you're writing early drafts of things, to hand that over to broadcasters and production companies, they have to see the potential in the early drafts.

the commissioner was panicked by my early drafts because she couldn't see it, she couldn't see it. Luckily, John Rolfe, who was the head of the production company, took it upon himself very wisely to send it straight to the head of comedy at Channel 4. And he read the drafts, and this was at a time when I was told that my writing was so poor, I would need a co-writer.

So I began to interview white men to help me write my show. And Phil Clark, who was the head of comedy, he read my early drafts and he said, why on earth are we looking for co-writers? Stop. This is great. So I was lucky in that regard, but it took a tussle. And this would happen a lot.

This would happen a lot. Sadly for me, chewing gum also came with some nightmares, you know, as it was writing the second season, that was the thing I took a break from and I was sadly spiked and assaulted. So it then became not only the trauma of that, but then the trauma of trying to find power somewhere where else but in the show I had created

and that power being consistently denied to me was quite hard to deal with action. and it took its toll. Right. And so now you're kind of having a very different experience as a creator with the show. Were there any moments, you know, whether filming or in production where you had like a really good like I'm the boss of this situation? Oh, yes. Yes.

This is my main one. This is or the show is my baby and then it's also 12 mini babies and my special. special baby is episode six. And it's my baby because really nobody had a clue how we were going to shoot it. They were actually panicking. They brought me to the school to say, Michaela, what on earth do you see? And I got to really show them everything I saw. I got to say, look, they can come from there. We'll put these guys here. We'll see Ryan walking through from here. And I think it was like a sedative for everybody to provide the sedative because they had no idea. And to know it felt so good.

I was so excited. Michaela Cole is the creator and star of I May Destroy You on HBO. She spoke with Doreen St. Felix, the New Yorker's TV critic. I'm David Remnick, and that's our show for today. For more about the radio hour and everything that we're doing at The New Yorker, follow us on Twitter at New Yorker. And I hope you'll join us next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tunei, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon, Corby, Callalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Gauphin and Putuguele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Meng Faye Chen, and Emily May. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Trina Endowment Fund.