The Prestige TV Podcast - 'I May Destroy You'

Episode Date: June 29, 2020

‘I May Destroy You’ was recently labeled “the best British TV in years” by Grammy-winning singer Adele. The drama, written by and starring Michaela Coel, captures millennial life, sexual assault, and plenty more with phenomenal nonverbal acting. Hosts: Juliet Litman and Alyssa Bereznak  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Order now at order. dot sweetgreen.com. Welcome to TV concierge. This is the ringer's guide to the streaming landscape. We are back today to discuss the astonishingly good and just simply astonishing show on HBO. I may destroy you. I'm Juliet Lippman. I am joined by my ringer colleague and the host of Boom Bus, the Rise and Fall of HQ trivia. Alyssa, Alyssa. Hello. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining me. I saw that you were tweeting about the show. And I was like, great, let's talk about it because I also really want to. What is your description of I May Destroy You? It is, I guess, a sort of millennial journey. It's very much like someone who may be depressed, may need to get

their life together, but they're also brilliant. And that's the protagonist. And something really tragic happens in the first couple episodes. And I imagine that they're, I haven't seen the whole show, but I imagine that that's going to be a lot of the rest of the show coming to terms with that tragedy. Yeah. So we're three episodes in. It's on, it's a co-production between HBO and BBC 3. So it's on both in the U.S. and the UK right now. Adel tweeted about it over the weekend saying it was the best shows she'd ever seen, which I found very I found exciting. So I like when Adele weighs in on anything. And I think in general, people are just blown away by this. And it stars Michaela Cole. She also wrote it and produced it. She previously did chewing gum, which was also on on Netflix and also on the BBC or Channel 4, I believe, in the UK. And to say she's a rising star is to completely underestimate her and to completely underappreciate what she's done so far. I think, you know, just three episodes into I May Destroy You, which you put really well,

is kind of about like the travelogue of aftermath from a really traumatic event. And I am just so curious to see the scripts, because when I was watching, I'm a major like TV plus phone person. Like I will, I will be on my phone a lot while watching television these days. I admit it. But I was like, I'm always two device.

I'm a two device girl. I was like, so I actually have watched the three episodes two times each because I was like, I know I'm missing stuff. So I watched, I went back. The acting is so superb, but it's also the kind of acting where you can tell that the script was so

meticulous that there was very clear direction of how each actor should respond. And I can't think of another show that's communicated so much through non-verbal acting in recent memory. Sure. And I think it accomplishes a lot through that because you start to realize things about the characters before they realize them themselves. And that's the sort of brilliance of the script in a lot of ways. Also, the shorthand between characters demonstrates their relationship it's just in such an expert and I would say efficient way. Like you don't need to know the backstory because you can understand like two characters dynamic by a couple exchange lines.

And that's just really impressive. It really is. The actor who plays Simon, I just find to be like, I was really blown away by his kind of like ambiguous and clearly checked out performance. Like, you know, we're only three episodes in,

you and I. So we don't know everything. But so far, it's very clear that he's like a person who has a lot of secrets and we don't know what they are yet, but it was very obvious that he was like someone you should watch from the very beginning. He uses like a look to signify so much that I can't get over it. And then today in the New Yorker, Doreen St. Felix wrote about the show as well. And she, I think really just honed in on it exceptionally well.

I mean, definitely check out Doreen's piece. It kind of encapsulates the thrill of watching this show really. really, really well. It's a great companion to the show itself. There's an absolute charisma and energy that Michaela Cole has. Dorian says it's a wreck of charisma, which I think is a great way putting it, because there's so much franticness happening throughout the show, but it's wielded to an incredible maximum effect. And I feel like a level of visceral reaction that I haven't felt to a television show in a really long time. Completely. The frenetic energy is electrifying as a viewer. And you see it in her expressions. I'm thinking specifically of like the moment after she's

meeting with her agents after her, like her deadline. And she's just like smiling. But it's like a really crazy chaotic smile because she doesn't know what to say and she knows she fucked up. And like there were so many moments like that. I also think that the energy of the show in terms of like action and being out in clubs and sort of interacting with friend groups is personally electrifying for me. right now because I'm so cut off from it. I think that's like another layer is just, oh, man, like they're all touching and they're all like dancing together. That's fun. There's a lot of clubs and drugs and like a level of just sort of human interaction that feel so far in giving quarantine. But then on the other hand, if you look into Michaela Cole's work and you see like

the speeches she's given, or in 2018, she gave the keynote. speech at the Edinburgh TV festival. And it was the James McTaggart lecture. And you and I both watched this 53-minute speech on YouTube. It's the most captivating speech I think I've literally ever seen. Like, I can't think of anything else even close to this. And it's a really, really compelling and fascinating speech where she talks a lot about the racism she's encountered her whole life.

And very specifically, all like the black actors that she has come up with weren't treated fairly within the TV system and whatnot. And in that way, she is, you know, speaking about a lot of topics that I think have just diffused all cultural conversations in the last few weeks. And so Doreen's piece also gets at this as well. It's like a perfect for this moment television show, despite the fact that it hinges on people actually interacting and we're all alone right now. And I mean, the Edinburgh literary, the Edinburgh TV festival speech is like, I've just am astonished by it. It was, I was sad when it was over. Same. Yeah. And I don't even really like speeches that much. I usually cringe at speeches. Like there's all these awkward moments, but Michaela just like made it amazing. And she's got such a magnetic humility to her delivery and to her storytelling that I just can't get over. The other thing that I was thinking of that I just like again, another demonstration of her efficient and really expert storytelling is all the media in this show is either. like clips of natural disasters from climate change or like really disturbing conspiracy theory YouTube videos. Yeah. And like I just think that was like a perfect way to place you in a time without actually having to like beat someone over the head about it. Like it's like, yes, we're in this moment of like uncertainty and disaster and like misinformation. And of course,

like you're kind of bouncing off of these societal things and trying to. to make sense of them in your own life. And it was so quick, but it was so effective. Another piece of the show that's like that as well, there's an implicit understanding of how, like, the internet is just part of millennial life and people younger, where she, um, the character, Arabella gets stopped on the street very often by fans who read her first book, which was based on, like, a bunch of tweets.

Like, that's the idea. And then they take, like, selfies with her or they, like, quote her back to her. It's just, like, a pitch perfect understanding. of how online life can translate into a regular offline life as well. And there's a, there's a real, like, interest and difference between, like, digital and analog in the show that doesn't really need to be named, but it exists. And I think that also is, like, startling in how implicit its message and just, like, so well done. I can't really think of a lot of comps for this show. Like, people have been comparing it to Fleabag, but I don't

really think other than the fact that it's like two women who started on the stage and then move to TV. Is that similar? I mean, what Michaela Cole is doing is so total. I just like, I can't, I don't even know what to compare it to. Yeah. It's not about like, like, dating life or, I don't know, what it's like to be depressed in your 20s. It's about so much more than that. Yeah. And it's, it's about like society. And I mean, I haven't seen the rest of the episodes of the series. But like, it, I just have complete and total trust that they're. going to handle this tragedy that we were talking about with such subtlety and care. I also want to say that I've never seen a show that's been so explicit about period stuff.

And it was really gratifying for me. In episode three, there's an like incredibly absurd and uncomfortable, perfect exchange between Arabella and a man about her period and the blood that comes out of you during your period. And you're so right. I've never seen anything like that on TV. And the other thing that I thought about was the Starbucks tampon situation from like a week or two ago. And I was like once again, this show is like perfectly timed. How did she do it?

Yeah. It was pretty explicit in like just like you could see the blood clot in her hands. And I was just like, is this even allowed? I don't know. To me it like sort of made me feel weirdly seen. Like I was just like, oh, like this is an element that women have to deal with all the time. But weirdly, I've never seen it addressed. and I guess it's because it's gross, but there's way more other gross, like, male humor that's I've seen in movies and TV.

So I think she also brings that, like, amazing sort of female expertise to the show that you could only get from a woman. It's true. There's a lot of about, like, the mechanics of sex in the show about, like, just sort of like all the small moments. And that's a great point. I haven't really, like, I don't even know what else to point to. And it's not for, like, gross out effect. It's like, makes everything more humane. Yeah. And she's just. She's like on drugs in the club and you can see her like going low and you can see like her pad sticking out and I was just like, oh my God, this is amazing. This is like perfect early 20s mess in my mind.

Absolutely. If you can't tell, we really recommend I May Destroy You. We really recommend checking out McCle of Cole on YouTube speaking at the Edinburgh TV festival. We also recommend checking out Doreen St. Felix on this piece as well. These are all of our source materials, all of our source texts today. Please check out this TV show and we'll be back when we're. TV concierge tomorrow. I'm so excited to introduce the Bukari Sellers podcast

in partnership with the Ringer. We're tackling the issues of the day through interviews with high-profile guests and conversations with a rotating panel of the country's best and leading thinkers, influencers, and writers. You know, I'm not only an attorney and a former elected official.

Sometimes you see me on CNN, and I'm a new author of a New York Times bestselling book, My Vanishing Country. But now we're introducing the Bucari Sellers podcast. And we're going to cover everything from the 2020 election to sports and culture to the larger movement for racial equality in the United States. We're going to have some of your favorite quarterback, some of your favorite politicians, some of your favorite athletes, writers, singers, actors, actresses. The Bukari Sellers podcast will debut on Monday, June 29th. Listen free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.