Years before she became known as the celebrated creator of television’s “I May Destroy You,” Michaela Coel was a rising star brave enough to go out on a limb. Invited to deliver a lecture during the 2018 Edinburgh TV festival, the East London native gave a powerful assessment of the industry — and society at large — by discussing the racism she experienced and the sexual assault she endured.
Feeling like a perennial outsider, Coel also took the opportunity to redefine what it means to be a misfit. The designation, she explained, sometimes has nothing to do with the way a person presents herself and everything to do with the way the world sees her.
“A misfit is one who looks at life differently,” she said. “Many, however, are made into misfits because life looks at them differently; the U.K.’s Black, Asian and ginger communities, for example.”
Her definition beautifully embodies a running theme in Coel’s triumphant speech: She takes what you think you know about a sprawling set of subjects and forces you to reassess everything.
That speech has now been turned into a book, “Misfits: A Personal Manifesto,” that further explores themes of race, gender and class. The book, which begins months before her moment onstage, opens with a moth — one that Coel kills with a toxic spray and little regard — and the realization that she’s lost the ability to smell. The dead moth and that missing sense become symbols woven through a narrative that charts Coel’s progression from a misfit growing up in London to a misfit writing and producing her own successful show.
In the quiet solitude of the English countryside, Coel recalls writing several versions of her speech with beautiful happy endings and full-circle narratives wrapped in a bow. But a dream — with a moth, no less — has her rethinking and critiquing her drafts. In searching for the meaning of her dream, Coel becomes dissatisfied with the ending she plotted. It’s expository, she decides, but also inauthentic.
“How long, I begin to wonder, has my habit been to recount horror with a smile,” she writes, “standing in the light recalling tales of darkness?”
What we’re left with is the result of Coel letting herself sit in her pain. The speech starts with her childhood, detailing her upbringing in social housing, her interactions with bullies, friends and a pregnant 14-year-old, before moving onto her acting career. As it’s a speech, nothing is explored with much depth — memorable moments from her adulthood take up fleeting space on the page. Coel drops out of a couple universities and ends up acting at a theater close to her childhood home before eventually writing and performing in “Chewing Gum Dreams,” a one-woman play later adapted into an award-winning television show.
It sounds like a story of triumph: how Coel succeeded despite odds, the underdog story we typically reserve for sports biopics or an episode of “Ellen.” But Coel weaves the pain from racism, loneliness, overt sexualization and assault into every line and every accomplishment. On one hand, you want to cheer Coel on, hail her as the success she is. But on the other, the more successful she gets, the more horror she endures. Yet her story isn’t just about surviving success, it’s about surviving.
“Some say our industry is a microcosm of the world,” she writes. “It’s a delicate dance, isn’t it; the world reflecting us, we, in turn, the world. We have to remember that there are people, outsiders to this industry, being raped by men and women who lack any celebrity status to snatch or political power to dissolve.”
Seeking justice for mistreated misfits is rare. Coel dedicates the latter part of her speech to highlighting barriers to success, her journey to become an executive producer of her own show, the redlines and rejections, the lack of space for healing, the budgetary costs. People keep telling her that show business isn’t going to change; just because it’s dysfunctional doesn’t mean anyone can do anything about it. Coel isn’t settling for that.
“The misfit doesn’t climb in pursuit of safety or profit; she climbs to tell stories,” Coel said that day onstage. “She gets off the ladder, and onto the swings; swinging back and forth, sometimes aggressively, sometimes standing up on the swing, back and forth, in pursuit of only transparency, observing the changes, but wonders if these changes are coming from a faulty system.”
They are. But a misfit doesn’t give up.
Natachi Onwuamaegbu was a reporting intern for The Washington Post Features department.
Misfits
A Personal Manifesto
By Michaela Coel
Henry Holt and Co. 128 pp. $19.99
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