Michaela Coel on Creativity, Romance, and the Path to Wakanda Forever

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ALL WITHIN SIGHT
Undercover earring. Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello bangles. Fashion Editor: Ib Kamara.
Photographed by Malick Bodian, Vogue, November 2022.

Michaela Coel doesn’t like to sit still; she’s a self-​described mover, the type to run a half-​marathon in the middle of the night for fun. So I’m not all that surprised when the 35-year-old actor-writer-​director suggests meeting for a Rollerblading session on a Sunday morning in Accra, Ghana’s capital city. “Totally down for that, sounds like fun!!!” I respond via WhatsApp, adding one too many exclamation points out of apprehension. To be honest, it’s a terrifying idea. The day before, in Accra’s historic Jamestown, I’d witnessed Coel flying through traffic on her skates, her polka-dot Burberry cape flapping wildly behind her, photographer Malick Bodian and his crew in hot pursuit. It was a daredevil stunt suited more to an action movie than a Vogue cover shoot.

Looking every inch the athlete, Coel shows up early for our meet, slender but strong in black running shorts and a sports bra, a purple baseball hat thrown over her closely cropped ’fro. She shows me her skates—white with gigantic lilac wheels—and tells me that big wheels equal great speed. “The balance is tough, but the enjoyment is max,” she says, grinning. We’re in the parking lot of Decathlon, a sprawling French sports-supply store where she’s persuaded me to buy my first ’blades. The pair I’ve chosen have small wheels—the better to keep me grounded, I think. With guards on my wrists and elbows and kneepads strapped over my baggy jeans, I look like an overgrown teenage boy. Still, safety first—Coel insists on it. “If my skate teacher saw you he’d be like, ‘Where’s the helmet?’ ” she says. For now though, the bucket hat is a fair compromise.

FULL FLIGHT
Coel wears a Gucci Made To Measure Dress by Alessandro Michele. Gucci earring. 

Luckily, Rashaq, one of several skater-boy types on the store’s staff, has agreed to give me a crash course before we take to the streets. As someone who’s only ever used old-school quads, I quickly realize that in-line skating is a totally different beast. Coel compares it to switching from Android to iPhone. And she’s not wrong. I’m struggling to control my limbs and rapidly perspiring in the unrelenting heat. Aside from a couple of trees flanking the entrance of the lot, there’s little shelter from the sun—but Coel’s basically doing pirouettes and has barely broken a sweat. “There’s some sort of slow euphoric feeling that I get when I skate. It’s just my time,” she says, breezing past. “I feel like skaters are never stressed or agitated. They’re on good vibes.”

As a little girl, Coel would skate around the East London council estate where she grew up with her mother and older sister. But it wasn’t until March of last year, while visiting her grandmother in Accra and inspired by a group of kids learning to Rollerblade, that she picked up the sport again. Before ascending to the impressive custom gear she’s wearing today, she bought her first grown-up pair of skates at Decathlon. “This is what happens when you’re not risk-averse,” she deadpans pointing to the scars on her knees, the result of a tumble she took last spring shortly before she flew home to London for the BAFTA awards.

Coel has always been a fast learner, the type to throw herself headfirst into new challenges: As a teenager, she took up Irish dancing, the only Black girl in her London high school’s history to join the team, performing at the talent show the same year. Skating is more than that though—it gives her a mind-body connection, a sense of liberation, especially here in Ghana, she says, where she moves with a particular kind of ease. “I’d been to Africa before—Kenya and Uganda—but when I came here I was really seeing people who looked like me,” says Coel, who first came to the West African country to film Black Earth Rising, Hugo Blick’s searing 2018 drama series about the Rwandan genocide. “A friend of mine was with me, and he remembers us getting off the plane and me walking around as if I knew where I was going.” On that trip, she traveled the length and breadth of the country, discovering places even her mother and father, who emigrated to London before she was born, didn’t know. “I remember looking at all the kids playing and it hit me, like, Wow, this could’ve been me and I think I would have really enjoyed that,” she says. “Yes, there are a lot of sad things; poverty, unemployment, struggle. There’s also a lot of peace, friendliness. There’s a lack of anxiety.”

By midday I’m feeling less wobbly, and my teacher Rashaq thinks we’re ready to hit the road. Coel knows all the best routes in the city, and suggests we head to Cantonments, an affluent neighborhood with smooth tarmac perfect for Rollerblades. She navigates the streets like a local because she practically is one; last year she lived around here for six months. I do my best to keep pace as we skate past the organic grocery store where she buys all her vegan supplies, an upscale eatery called Bistro 22, and an Irish pub popular with the expat crowd. Mercifully, there are very few cars on the road and we quickly find ourselves cruising down a virtually deserted residential street. I fail to realize a pretty steep decline—and before I know it, I’ve lost control of my skates and, arms flailing, I’m zooming on a direct collision course with a garden fence. Somehow, Coel manages to rescue me, grabbing both my elbows just in time to bring me to a stop. “Learning to break is the hardest part,” she says as I giggle nervously with embarrassment. “You know, every time I think about that, I think about my career. Taking rest, learning to do that—learning to break,” she says. “It means something on every level.”

HOME AGAIN
Coel in Accra, Ghana’s capital, with her father, Derek Kwesi Coel, and grandmother Jemima Andam (in an Erdem dress). Coel wears a Dolce & Gabbana blazer and top. Louis Vuitton dress. Dior shoes.


Coel has had a lot of practice in setting professional boundaries, in trusting her instincts. To maintain ownership of her work, she famously walked away from a $1 million deal with Netflix in 2017 to make what would become I May Destroy You, the earth-shattering BAFTA- and Emmy Award–winning drama based on her experience of sexual assault. She also severed ties with her talent agency that year, who she claims had pressured her to sign that deal. It was the BBC who agreed to give her full creative control and rights for the show, with HBO signing on as a co‑­producer. “No is the only power you really have in this industry, that’s the only way to carve a path,” says her friend Donald Glover. “Michaela can really do anything she wants, have any role she wants. She means a lot because of the choices she’s made, and I don’t think she takes those choices lightly.”

Later in the day, after a well-​deserved nap, I head out to join Coel for a sunset dinner in Kokrobite, a town on the Atlantic coast an hour away known for its white-sand beaches. According to her, the grilled-fish platter at this one spot is worth the drive alone. I’ve been encouraged to pack my bathing suit; she’s hoping we can squeeze in a dip before we eat. When I arrive though, it seems all bets are off. The sun’s already low on the horizon, and I find her at the bar on the beach under a big Jacquemus straw hat, dressed in a peasant-style Ganni sundress and flat sandals. Without her enormous skates, she appears petite and delicate, though her energy still radiates. “You should try some of this, it’s home-brewed,” she says, tapping the side of her glass. The owner of the lodge, a cheerful barrel-chested man named Lion, pours me a shot of Akpeteshie, a Ghanaian liquor made from distilled palm wine. The taste is sweet with a surprisingly strong finish, a drink better sipped than slammed.

BREAKING MOLDS
“That sold me on the role, the fact that my character’s queer,” Coel says of playing the combat instructor Aneka in Black Panther.


Photo: Courtesy of Marvel Studios

The place has a reassuringly soulful vibe. There are lights strung from reclaimed wooden beams, colorful murals decorating the walls, and thatched beach huts festooned with flags. The backdrop—lush coconut groves and endless sandy beach—looks like something from the movies. If you can believe it, the restaurant’s name is Wakanda, after the fictional African country of superhero legend Black Panther. “My 10-year-old son came up with it,” says Lion proudly.

In November, Coel will appear in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the second in Marvel’s wildly popular Afrofuturist series. News of her role immediately lit up the internet, energizing Coel fans and comic book aficionados alike. For the actor, joining the ensemble cast was a wish fulfilled; she’d been one of the many young hopefuls who auditioned for the first Black Panther movie while she was still a student at the Guildhall drama school in London. “I think for a lot of people it was the first time we’d seen some sort of representation on a very mainstream platform about the magic of Africa, the magic of the people, our ancestors,” she says. “Coming here, you do feel something magical.”

By the time Black Panther was released, Coel was making a name for herself with Chewing Gum, the hilarious one-woman play turned BAFTA award–winning sitcom she created that follows the life of Tracey Gordon, an amateurish 20-​something on a mission to lose her virginity. She remembers attending the London premiere of Black Panther in a halter-neck dress she’d made out of wax print fabric her mother had brought back from Accra. “I thought to myself, I’m definitely going in something African,” she says. Unbeknownst to Coel, director Ryan Coogler already had his eye on her, and he noticed how easily she mingled with cast members. “Aneka, the character Michaela plays, is kind of a rebel,” says Coogler. “It made a lot of meta sense with Michaela being someone who is pushing the industry forward and carving out her own space.”

The role Coel would play in the Black Panther sequel was still taking shape when Chadwick Boseman, who starred as the beloved titular superhero, died at the age of 43 after a long battle with colon cancer. When filming began last year, “it felt like the entire cast was processing grief,” she says. “There was a sense that we have to bring this baby home in the name of Chadwick. I thought to myself, I’m rolling up my sleeves and I’m getting in. I don’t need to be front and center, I’m here to support.” Her castmate and friend Winston Duke describes the emotional experience as a bonding moment. “She really became part of the family,” he says.

Coel wasn’t the only newcomer on set. Ultimate Fighting champ Kamaru Usman has a cameo in the movie, and the pair became fast friends. “We’re like brother and sister,” says Usman. In the midst of filming in Atlanta, Coel and Duke traveled to see Usman face his UFC rival Colby Covington at Madison Square Garden in New York. She was immediately enthralled. “I was going through a rough time, and Usman said, ‘You need to go fighting,’ ” says Coel, who picked up the sport a month later and now trains with a Canadian mixed martial arts fighter in London. “It’s like physical chess.”

FASCINATING RHYTHM
“Michaela can really do anything she wants, have any role she wants,” says Donald Glover, “because of the choices she’s made.” Michael Kors Collection gown. Loewe shoe. Chanel earring.


JOY RIDE
“Everyone talks about her genius talent,” says her friend Paapa Essiedu, “but the thing that impresses, inspires, and moves me most about Michaela is the size of her heart.” Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello jacket. Christopher John Rogers shirt and pants.


In comic book lore, Aneka is a captain and combat instructor in the Dora Milaje, the fearless all-​female crew of warriors who protect the kingdom of Wakanda. As the story goes, she falls in love with her warrior colleague Ayo, played by Florence Kasumba, and their forbidden affair causes disruption in the ranks. “That sold me on the role, the fact that my character’s queer,” Coel says. “I thought: I like that, I want to show that to Ghana.” Like many African countries, Ghana has draconian antigay laws dating back to the colonial era. Most recently though, a bill has been put to parliament calling for some of the most oppressive anti-LGBTQ+ legislation the continent has ever seen. If passed, it could make identifying as gay or even an ally a second-​degree felony, punishable by five years in prison. “People say, ‘Oh, it’s fine, it’s just politics.’ But I don’t think it is just politics when it affects how people get to live their daily lives,” she says. “That’s why it felt important for me to step in and do that role because I know just by my being Ghanaian, Ghanaians will come.”

She’s challenged conventions before: I May Destroy You struck like lightning in 2020, just as the world was shutting down, igniting searching conversations around sexual violence and consent. In fact, the series’ cultural impact is still being felt. In January, a bill to legally classify stealthing—the act of removing a condom during sex without consent—as a crime was passed in Chile as a direct result of a scene Coel had written. Maite Orsini, a congresswoman from Santiago, was inspired to lobby for the law after watching one particularly chilling episode of the series. Coel compares the experience of seeing the world react to her work to flying a kite—an act she set in motion but that has taken on life of its own, buoyed by a collective force. “There’s this huge thing in the air and maybe at one point I was holding the string, but now I’m just gazing up with everybody else,” she says.

The real-life events that I May Destroy You is based on took place when she was working on season two of Chewing Gum. While up late writing at the office, she headed out to meet a friend at a bar. Sometime that night, her drink was spiked, she says, and she was sexually assaulted. As she tells it, the emotional trauma she suffered has been tempered by confronting it head-on. “I don’t think I really understood how much making a show would make this thing lose its power,” she says. “Now it’s just a scar like these ones.” She points to her knees.

And yet certain injuries linger. Since the assault, she’s experienced unexplained blackouts, most recently while having dinner with her cousin and a friend in New York, an episode her doctors say could have been triggered by another spiked drink. “All I can tell you is that it’s the most scared I’ve ever been,” says Coel, who remembers stumbling toward the restaurant’s exit before losing her vision for 15 minutes. “The strange thing is when I was spiked, there’s a complete memory gap,” she says. She doesn’t remember falling, as her character does in the show. “There’s no memory of fear.”

IN MEDIS RES
Coel stops traffic in Accra’s bustling Makola Market wearing a Michael Kors Collection wrap and Gucci jacket, shirt, pants, gloves, and shoes.


Coel first shared her story publicly at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in 2018, where she was invited to deliver the prestigious keynote speech, known as the MacTaggart lecture, the first Black woman in the event’s 42-year history to do so. In the address, she spoke candidly about the experiences that had shaped her perspective, including her harrowing assault, the racism she faced at drama school, and the isolation she felt in the entertainment world. The speech, which formed the basis of her 2021 book Misfits: A Personal Manifesto, would also serve as a creative springboard for I May Destroy You. Its import was clear: The industry needed to be held accountable, to be more transparent, to lift up voices like hers that had been silenced for far too long.

And yet physically her voice was failing her. “I don’t know if you listened to the audiobook of Misfits, but I’m so hoarse. I have so many nodules and a blood blister on my vocal chords,” explains Coel, adding that, in preparation for our interview, she was prescribed medication and two days of vocal rest in order to be able to speak. It’s part of the reason Coel, a theater kid at heart, has more often than not found herself in front of a camera and not on the stage. “My voice is too fragile for theater.”

For Coel’s mother, Kwenua Osborne, I May Destroy You signaled the moment she would find her own voice. Empowered by her daughter’s unflinching series, Osborne was compelled to share her experience with sexual violence, a family secret she had all but buried. “For Michaela to turn what happened to her into a show—for a lot of people to see and be touched by it, and for some to come out and say, ‘This happened to me,’ is just so inspiring,” says Osborne, a mental-​health nurse who suffered abuse at the hands of someone she knew when she was a child. “And because it touched me personally, I had to open up and tell her everything.”

GOTTA MOVE
She’s an in-line skater, runner, and, most recently, mixed martial arts fighter, inspired by UFC champion Kamaru Usman. “It’s like physical chess,” Coel says of the sport. Burberry coat and skirt. Paula Rowan gloves. Gucci earring.


Coel describes her relationship with her mother in loving terms. “I mean, that’s my whole twin,” she says, pulling up a picture of them together outside her mom’s home in London on her phone. The resemblance is uncanny: the wide-set almond-shaped eyes, the symmetrical face, and those extraordinary high cheekbones. I recognize Osborne as the elegantly dressed woman often pictured next to Coel at awards shows. For a long time, Osborne would make the African-print dresses Coel wore on red carpets before she was being dressed by the likes of Balenciaga and Christopher John Rogers. “Michaela is really good with fabric even though she doesn’t know how to sew herself,” says Osborne, who learned the trade from her own dressmaker mother. “When the dress doesn’t fit, she knows.” She made clothes for Coel when she was a little girl too—as a way to connect to their Ghanaian heritage—and she told stories of her own childhood in the small village where she was raised, and the high school where she met Coel’s father. “I didn’t think my daughters would love Ghana because I grew up there and left,” says Osborne. “But when they went themselves and fell in love with the country, I loved it so much.”

Though separated for most of Coel’s childhood, her parents have an amicable relationship now, and in recent years, the actor has gotten closer to her father, who has moved back to Ghana. “I started to imagine my parents as people, not parents, and what a crazy life it must have been to emigrate to England. Imagine you’re a smart, intelligent man like my dad, but you are just seen as someone who cleans. You face this glass ceiling,” she says. “And so I have to thank him for everything he did, because he made me who I am.”

Coel plans to build a house in her father’s village and is toying with the idea of buying an apartment in Accra as well. I ask her if the vision of her future home includes a partner. She responds with her trademark wry humor—the annoying thing about having a house in rural Ghana, she tells me, is that you will eventually need someone to help you kill all the creepy-crawlies, if nothing else. Then her tone changes: “I do want a life companion,” she says. “I love romance and I love when romance turns into something deeper, a relationship where there’s understanding, transparency, forgiveness, openness. But you have to find that person, and I personally haven’t seen many healthy men. So I don’t know if I trust myself. I’m trying to do the work. I talk about this in therapy all the time, and actually, person by person, they’re getting healthier and healthier.”

It’s well after dark by the time we’re done with dinner, and the already quiet beach is empty. To Coel, though, the night is still young. She suggests I tag along with her to her favorite lounge in the city where she’s planning to meet a few friends. “You took a nap earlier didn’t you?” she says, ribbing me. My energy is waning, but the invitation is tempting for two reasons: Accra is known for its vibrant nightlife, and Coel has a reputation for her taste in music. (Some of the songs she handpicked for the I May Destroy You soundtrack were written by Ghanaian artists such as Lady Jay, a singer she met on a night out much like this one.) “In Ghana, I like it when I’m creating things for other people,” she says. “That’s what I like about making TV.”

Coel moves with relative anonymity here—only occasionally recognized by European and American transplants on the night scene—and that suits her. She has a healthy aversion to celebrity; up until a few years ago, she still lived in London with a roommate, Ash, who she met on an apartment-sharing app. “Ash lives in Northampton now, and I go up there and stay at his house,” she says. “We cook the same meals that we used to make when we were living together.” She balks at the mere mention of an entourage, preferring the meaningful exchanges that can spring from striking up conversations with strangers instead. Her circle is an eclectic mix of old and new, friends she’s known since high school and people she’s connected with along the way. Much like the characters she’s written, Coel tends to be emotionally porous, not guarded, at once fearless and fiercely vulnerable. “Everyone talks about her genius talent, which is true and can’t be underestimated, but from the first moment I met her, the thing that impresses, inspires, and moves me most about Michaela is the size of her heart,” says friend and collaborator Paapa Essiedu, who has known Coel since drama school and starred opposite her in I May Destroy You. “I think it knows no limits, and she’s incredibly courageous in the way she chooses to share it.”

SUDDEN IMPACT
Seeing the world react to her work is like flying a kite. “There’s this huge thing in the air and maybe at one point I was holding the string, but now I’m just gazing up with everybody else.” Gucci dress. Alberta Ferretti jacket and pants. Chanel shoes.


SO LONG. FAREWELL
Chanel cardigan, shorts, glove, earring, and necklaces. 


What exactly she’ll choose to do next is something that Coel is not quite ready to talk about. She had begun work on a project on the heels of I May Destroy You in 2020 but ended up setting it aside; something wasn’t gelling. “I couldn’t figure out what my motivations were; money and creating jobs are fine, but that’s not it for me,” says Coel, who remembers being in her office in Central London, surrounded by flowers and cookies sent by her producers, and a feeling of unease overwhelming her. “There was the assumption that, okay, so now I May Destroy You has happened, you’ve got this window and you have to capitalize on it. And when I hear that, it sounds like the root is fear, because the assumption is the window is going to close. And I don’t feel comfortable making decisions based on fear,” she says. Instead, she did what felt right at the time: She took a break, traveled to Iceland, one of the few places that wasn’t in lockdown, hired a car, found an Airbnb, googled the top 20 scenic places in the country, and visited each one.

There are revelers spilling out onto the sidewalk when we arrive in Accra, and the street is chock-full of local taxicabs. Her cousin has sent word via text that the venue is packed. It might be best for her to go a little incognito. I offer my bucket hat as a disguise and she happily accepts. As we finish touching up our makeup in the car, she shares a thought that’s been on her mind lately: What if the concept for her new show was a woman sitting at the bar? Of course she’d be amazing looking—huge shades, somewhat elusive. Coel’s mission, as she sees it, is to get to know this woman, find out her story. But she can’t do that unless her intentions are pure. “When I make a show, it’s because I’ve sat at the bar. I’ve looked across at her. I’ve let her know I’m not going anywhere. No contracts or money involved, it’s just me and her. But when that’s not true, she doesn’t come over,” she says. Right now she has a good feeling, her head and heart are aligning, there’s a sense of forward motion. “It feels like she’s slowly turning her face toward me,” she tells me. “She’s slowly opening up.” 

Coel wears Ahluwalia.

In this story: hair, Virginie Moreira; makeup, Bernicia Boateng.