Michaela Coel hasn’t heard the term ‘nepo baby’. I get the sense that the multi-award winning actor, writer and director cloisters herself away from conversations like these, which cause a storm on social media but rarely have much real-world impact. She doesn’t, in fact, use social media, rarely gives interviews and has long been an advocate for ‘disappearing’ — as she said in her 2021 Emmy acceptance speech (she won the best writing award for I May Destroy You, the groundbreaking series she wrote, co-directed and starred in), “visibility these days seems to somehow equate to success. Do not be afraid to disappear…and see what comes to you in the silence.” Right now she is in Ghana, and enjoying more silence than she ever gets back home in London. “Coming to the village where my parents were born slows me down in a way that I think is beneficial for my mental health,” she explains. “Just living somewhere with less cityness, with fewer lights…”
We are talking about what it takes to get into the arts, which is how ‘nepo babies’ come up; the term is internet slang for the progeny of wealth and celebrity — people like Jaden Smith or Kaia Gerber, the supermodel daughter of Cindy Crawford (Gerber in particular has strained against the criticism that she, and others like her, have had an unfair leg up; “no artist is going to sacrifice their vision for someone’s kid,” she said last week. “That just isn’t how art is made…”).
“You know, [nepotism] is 100 per cent there and present but I don’t think it benefits a creator to think about it too much,” says Coel, thoughtfully. “And it certainly doesn’t benefit me because it just makes me angry.
“If people don’t believe that [being] the child of someone, or the niece or nephew of someone, whatever [that relationship may be] , has anything to do with their achievements, then that is hilarious. I find that very funny — that is a cute way for you to live, you carry on like that. The rest of us, we can’t think about this too much, because it’s going to make us feel defeated. You have to say, like, ‘f*** that system. I’m going to figure out a way to do my own thing’, and you can stand adjacent to those people and know how you got there.”
She caveats this with a recognition of how things have changed for her personally: “…the other truth is if I continue on my path and have children I’m sure my opinion will evolve somehow.”
According to a 2022 study, only eight per cent of actors, musicians and writers come from a working-class background, like Coel’s (she grew up on an estate in Aldgate) but as she points out: “the world is going to carry on, and it’s probably going to carry on just like it always has — the more important thing is what are you going to do?”
Coel is here to discuss her role as a mentor on the BMW Filmmaking Challenge, in partnership with the BFI. The challenge opens in March to filmmakers from across the BFI NETWORK (the organisation which provides funding opportunities for new writers and directors); from the entrants, a shortlisted five will be given £10,000 to produce their own short film, with mentorship from Coel herself. The films will be made specifically to fit across the new BMW i7’s backseat theatre screen. “It’s the widest screen I’ve ever seen in the back of a car,” says Coel. “so the Filmmaking Challenge provides an opportunity for creatives to explore new and interesting perspectives.” The idea is to offer exposure and hands-on experience to new talent. “Go and see some art, read some poetry” is her advice to any filmmaker interested in applying. “[The film time] is so short — it’s like 60 to 90 seconds — look at what happens in 90 seconds of your life, how can you make that surreal? Personally, I would think about the dreams I have.”
She writes her dreams down each morning, she tells me — recently she had one where huge planes were flying out from the horizon line. “I thought they were going to whack me, but then they’d disappear. I was enjoying the thrill, so I just stood there, receiving these planes.” She breaks out into an infectious, open-throated laugh. “I’m not sure what all that means.”
The mentorship feels like a natural fit for a self-starter like Coel, who has carved out a stellar career but always, crucially, on her own terms. First she dropped out of the University of Birmingham to pursue acting, then after leaving the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she produced and starred in her own play, Chewing Gum Dreams. She eventually turned that one-woman show into her first TV series, Chewing Gum, the success of which (Coel won two BAFTAs for her performance as Tracey Gordon) led to an offer from Netflix for a $1m deal.
The US streaming giant wanted to buy the rights to what would eventually become I May Destroy You, the pioneering 12-part series which dealt with Coel’s experience of sexual assault. Coel, having written 191 drafts of the script, wanted to retain a percentage of the copyright for herself but Netflix said no, so she turned them down.
In her 2018 MacTaggart Lecture — a prestigious talk given each year at the Edinburgh International Television Festival to an audience of 4,000 industry professionals — she pointed out that if you never had that much money to begin with, you wouldn’t miss it. “Money’s nice, but I prefer transparency,” she said. “My stories are my babies, I want to look after them.”
Walking away from the deal was a brave move in a long line of brave moves but I can’t help but wonder what her mum — an NHS mental health nurse, who brought up Coel and her sister single-handedly — thought when her daughter turned down $1m. Coel laughs: “I didn’t tell her. I don’t tell my mum [these things] in the moment, because she freaks out. I think she probably found that out in the lecture.”
The problem with formal routes into creative industries, Coel tells me, is that they don’t necessarily help you to hone your craft. “It’s important not to assume that a formal education is going to give you the tools that you need to be the creator you want to be,” she says. “I know some schools are great but my experience of school, and my friends’ experiences of school, is that you’re not really encouraged to think outside of the box or to trust your own mental journey. You’re not really taught how to be curious. As a creative you should be actively rebelling.” She says that her biggest piece of advice, particularly to those from working class backgrounds, is to simply start creating. “Do it as if you’re already in the industry… just start making things and trust the perspective that you have, because it’s gold.”
There seems to be an interesting duality in Coel’s relationship with her own upbringing, here in London. On the one hand, she tells me about feeling as if she needed to protect herself: “There was a lot of racial tension on the estate I grew up on — massive racial tension and fighting. There was a lot of gang culture. At school there were some very young pregnancies and a complete neglect by teachers… it was about protecting myself from letting these things change me as a person, from letting [them] reduce me.” Later, talking about Ghana, she tells me that “there’s something quite comforting about being in a place in which people look just like me. I think because I lacked that experience until six years ago [when she first visited the country], it feels like paying something back to my childhood self.”
On the other hand, though, she also sees the creative value in being the underdog or, to borrow the term she uses in her MacTaggart Lecture, the ‘misfit’. “I think, within worlds of oppression — whether that’s your gender, your ethnic background, your religion, your sexuality — there is a tussle, and you are constantly rubbing up against the ideals and social norms of the world around you. And within that tussle, there are magnificent stories, and there is gold. I think we have to really know that, and actively pursue and make those things for ourselves.”
Of the gatekeepers to the television industry, she is similarly sanguine, saying: “I don’t think we need to wait for any industry to open the gates to let us in. There’s so many ways in which we can make work without networks, channels and production companies. And I think it’s very important to know that, and to carry on with your life, as if you have the power to achieve, be known and have your voice counted now.”
Admittedly, she doesn’t think much has changed since she gave her MacTaggart Lecture in 2018 (at the time it sent shockwaves through the industry, calling for it to address issues of racism, access and exploitation). “Nicôle Lecky’s show Mood was a victory — she’s an amazing talent — but I can probably count all the victories on half a hand. I mean, it’s hard to gauge without data, but that’s just my hunch.”
In the wider industry too, any moves towards equality seem painfully incremental. We are speaking just a few days after the Oscar nominations have been announced and Coel is shocked that The Woman King didn’t receive any. “It was an absolutely phenomenal movie. I watched it with my mum and I was so moved,” she says. “Not just by the narrative, the direction, the actors, but by the fact that something existed that could make people feel so empowered — make women, and women of colour, feel so empowered. And I am confused as to why it hasn’t received any nominations. I can’t get my head around that. I don’t have any ties to that movie, I’m just a punter… I think it’s really weird and a bit depressing.” She says that she doesn’t “know how we work out” things like recognition within major awards.
I don’t think we need to wait for any industry to open the gates to let us in. There’s so many ways in which we can make work without networks, channels and production companies
And right now, she is focused on writing her next masterpiece. She follows the principles set out by Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way (which she calls a “big dog book”), including journaling — three pages, as soon as she wakes up. “I think it gets all the gunk out of my head so that I can just start afresh and focus on whatever is in front of me.” She meditates, exercises.
To borrow another line from that same iconic Emmy acceptance speech, she’s an advocate of ‘writing the tale that scares you’ — “and I have a lot of fear right now but it’s good because it means I’m getting my s**t done.”
