#I may destroy you on netflix tv

“To see that celebrated on a large scale now is not a surprise to me.”Ĭlarke also cottoned on to Coel’s talent early. “She was always very special and always unique,” he says. “For a start, we were the only three black people on the course.”Įssiedu and Coel became tight, but kept their friendship and careers separate early on Essiedu only got the part of Kwame on I May Destroy You after the casting director put him forward for audition. “It was difficult not to notice her,” says actor Paapa Essiedu. Her faith departed almost as energetically as it had arrived when she made a gang of gay friends. She dropped out of university twice but at 23, decided drama school was her best bet.

At 18, she fell in love with Jesus and, by her own telling, became “an extreme Christian”. True to the spirit of the age, Coel began creating her own bloggy web pages, taking her revenge by spilling her guts to the world. Throughout her adolescence, racial slurs were casually thrown at her. Coel was the only black pupil in her year at primary school and was bullied – and bullied back. Later, more followed through the letterbox. Her mother worked as a cleaner and studied for a degree part-time Coel and her sister were kept occupied with theatre clubs, television and dial-up internet.Ī pile of dog excrement was left outside the family’s front door when she was a child. Back then, she says, she was called ugly, and felt like an outsider.

On screen, Coel is compelling to watch: face cut like a diamond, eyes and cheekbones dancing in perfect symmetry. Hers was one of only a handful of black families on the council estate she grew up on, bang on the border of Tower Hamlets and the City of London. “They are both once-in-a-generation talent.”īorn Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson to Ghanian parents, Coel changed her name at 23. “The only other person I’ve worked with the same unquenchable energy and relentless pursuit of excellence was Chris Morris,” he said. Phil Clarke, the former head of comedy at Channel 4 and producer behind Brass Eye, Peep Show, Fresh Meat and more, describes Coel as a real deal artist.

#I may destroy you on netflix tv

Coel with her breakthrough talent Bafta TV award for Chewing Gum in 2016.