Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson, known professionally as Michaela Coel, is a British actress, screenwriter, director, producer, singer, songwriter, poet and playwright. She is best known for creating and starring in the E4 sitcom Chewing Gum, for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance, and the BBC One/HBO comedy-drama series I May Destroy You.
Early life
Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson was born in London on 1 October 1987. Her parents are Ghanaian. She and her older sister grew up in London, primarily Hackney and Tower Hamlets, with her mother; her parents had separated before her birth. She attended Catholic schools in East London, and has said that her isolation as the only black pupil in her age cohort at primary school caused her to bully other pupils. The isolation did not continue into her secondary education at a comprehensive school. From 2007 to 2009, Coel attended the University of Birmingham, studying English Literature and Theology. She took a Ché Walker masterclass at RADA after meeting Walker at open mics. In 2009, she transferred to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she was the first black woman enrolled in five years. She won the Laurence Olivier Bursary award, which helped her fund her schooling. During her time at Guildhall, she attended the Mark Proulx workshop at Prima del Teatro and took the Kat Francois Poetry Course at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. She graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2012.
Career
In 2006, Coel began performing in poetry open mics in Ealing. As she continued to do open mics, she was encouraged by the actor, playwright, and director Ché Walker, who saw her perform at Hackney Empire, to apply to Guildhall. As a poet she has performed on stages including Wembley Arena, Bush Theatre, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and Rotterdam De Doelen Concert Hall. She went by the name Michaela The Poet. In 2009, Coel joined the Talawa Theatre Companysummer school program TYPT. During her time at Talawa, Coel was in the TYPT 2009 production of Krunch, directed by Amani Naphtali. That same year, Coel released an album entitled Fixing Barbie, which featured her work as a poet and musician. In 2011, Coel released the record We're the Losers. In 2012, Coel's play, Chewing Gum Dreams, was her senior / graduation project at Guildhall and it was first produced at the Yard Theatre in Hackney Wick. The play featured Coel in a one-woman show telling the dramatic story of a 14-year-old girl named Tracey. The play then went on to be produced by the Bush Theatre, Royal Theatre Holland, Royal Exchange Theatre, and the National Theatre. It received positive reviews. Coel appeared in the Channel 4 drama Top Boy and had leading roles at the National Theatre, including the award-nominated Home and the critically acclaimed Medea at the Olivier Theatre. In August 2014, Channel 4 announced that Coel would write and star in a new sitcom called Chewing Gum, inspired by her play Chewing Gum Dreams. "C4 Comedy Blaps" were released as teasers in September 2014, and the series began on E4 in October 2015. Her performance earned her the British Academy Television Award for Best Female Comedy Performance in 2016. She also won a BAFTA for Breakthrough Talent for writing the show. Chewing Gum received overwhelmingly positive reviews. In 2015, Coel appeared in BBC One drama London Spy. In 2016, she played Lilyhot in the E4 sci-fi comedy-drama The Aliens, which was shot in Bulgaria. Chewing Gum returned for a second series in January 2017. She also appeared in the "Nosedive" and "USS Callister" episodes of Charlie Brooker's series Black Mirror. She also had a small role in the 2017 film . In 2018, Coel starred in Black Earth Rising, a co-production between BBC Two and Netflix, where she played the main character of Kate. She also starred as Simone in the musical-drama film Been So Long, which was released on Netflix to positive reviews in October 2018. Coel created, wrote, produced, co-directed and starred in the comedy-drama series I May Destroy You, inspired by her own experience of sexual assault. The show launched on BBC One in the UK and HBO in the US in June 2020 to widespread acclaim. Coel acknowledged refusing $1,000,000 from Netflix after the streaming service declined to offer her intellectual property ownership of her show.
Personal life
For the 2016 BAFTA Awards, Coel wore a dress designed by her mother, made of Kente cloth. She has said that, like her Chewing Gum character Tracey, she became very religious in the Pentecostal faith, and embraced celibacy. Coel stopped practising Pentecostalism after attending Guildhall. She identifies as aromantic.
