Top 44 Michaela Coel Quotes

Where I grew up, in Aldgate, east London, one of the poorest boroughs in the country, I saw lots that was real – the bankers with their briefcases, the man next door with five wives, the illegal immigrants in Flat 5. I’m from a world you rarely see on screen, and I want to show it off.

I’m massively open-minded to pretty much anything.

We live in this era where we really enjoy being offended, although only on the Internet. I don’t know how beneficial it is. I wonder if we live in an age where we don’t have power, yet somehow feel we have virtual power. But I feel like it’s a distraction from real life.

What was nice for me was that when I got to secondary school – like high school – I met many other Ghanaian schoolgirls whose parents were also born in Ghana and were raising them here. We automatically had a huge kinship that was amazing.

What dominates my life isn’t the fact that I started off doing theatre. It’s probably to do with Christianity, my race, the class I was born into. These are the things that make my work. They make who I am as well.

In Britain, we need to start presenting the option of being a writer in front of black women. We need to present the idea of being a writer into poorer communities because the majority of black people in this country are working class. We need to let working-class people know that their voices are important.

‘Chewing Gum’ is kind of like the world I wish I grew up in. There wasn’t really a sense of community growing up.

I feel angry with myself the way I handled the Bible and Christianity. A lot more people are more normal with Christianity. I was crazy… telling people you will go to hell. I lost all my friends because of my militant faith.

I want to make sure I’m climbing because there’s no back-up. No one in my family has a house, and, regardless of your background, if someone has a house, that means you can always come back home. When you don’t have that, it’s like there isn’t anywhere to stand, so you have to keep jumping.

My sets are not peaceful. It’s a beautiful catastrophe. I am running around like a headless chicken. I don’t sleep because I am writing. It’s manic.

I think you just have to do you, whatever that is, and not feel like you have to be a certain way for other people to like you.

When you’ve got African parents, you go to uni, do finance, and go into accounting. But I’m not good with systems. I dropped out in my final year of college to become a Christian poet. Then went back to do my A-levels and went to uni in Birmingham to do political science and theology. I lasted 12 weeks.

To see people laughing or crying or listening, then being inspired to do their own thing? I can’t think of anything better than that.

I wrote a play at drama school, which was a dark comedy – people laughed and cried. And then my script of one of the shows was picked up by a comedy sketch company… so then I had to write comedy.

I am really weird.

I definitely believe in spirituality. I like to pray, but I’m not praying to something that I can define; I’m just speaking because I know it does have an effect.

I love Jeremy Corbyn, definitely.

To suggest things may be going on in our brains that we aren’t fully conscious of, that we unknowingly make classist, sexist and racist presumptions… Well, there just aren’t many comfortable ways to take that. And in the face of discomfort comes the mask of defence.

‘Chewing Gum’ ages me 15 years every time I do it – it’s insane.

‘Chewing Gum Dreams’ should make you look twice at the girl shouting on the bus and not just cuss her off from your life.

You have to be true to your instinctive way of writing. You have to find your identity.

I’m a Louis Theroux addict.

I over-write!

Twitter is just full of silly little people enjoying being sarcastic and rude and mocking.

We live in a world where if you’re white, an upper-class male of extreme privilege, and able-bodied, and you’re nothing that takes you away from that norm, then you’re going to have – then the world will not assign you problems because of what you are. That is actually the world we live in.

‘Chewing Gum’ is the London that I know.

Men are trained to like this version of womanhood, and when someone comes along smashing the table and messing up the party, it’s a bit like, ‘Get out; why are you disturbing the peace?’

The acting world is tough. It’s competitive – and even more so for women – but actually, for black female actresses, the issue isn’t really that it’s competitive: it’s that there just aren’t enough roles for them in film and TV.

Growing up on our estate, we were all different colours, but we were all really poor. I never really realised that black was a problem for some people.

I feel that when you want to start attacking people or completely rejecting the people you see as not on the godly side, to me, that isn’t God, and that isn’t love.

I love listening to audiobooks – I always lose my glasses, but if I have an audiobook, I don’t need them.

I went to drama school, where you learn to clown around a bit. You’re walking around in leotards every day for three years, and you’re taught clowning and mask work.

Socialisation is not optional. It’s an inescapable contract, and our birth into the world is our signature of agreement. Norms and ideologies vary from society to society, and most of them weren’t formed during our lifetimes but were handed down from one generation to the next.

I’m way too honest. It can backfire.

We need to encourage black women to know that they are authors of their own destiny, that they have important stories to tell, and that they are capable, so magically capable, of writing them and creating important pieces of work that will live forever in history.

I love Issa Rae. I adore her.

When I think of the things that I want to write, I can never say them out loud because I know how crazy they sound. I know what things sound like when you haven’t actually worked on the script, so I don’t go around saying some of these ideas because they just sound awful.

We can put fear of the future in front of us to block us, or behind us to drive us forward. I feel like telling all the people who look like me to start trying to write. You don’t know it’s possible because it’s not often in front of you.

Now I’m steeped in this world, I keep thinking going to the theatre every week is normal, but there’s a whole world of people who don’t go at all. I wrote ‘Chewing Gum Dreams’ for them – I’d love them to come.

Don’t sit there and complain. Rub your hands together and figure out what to do.

The environment on the ‘Chewing Gum’ set is where everyone can work to the best of their abilities and everyone is happy. So, if I’m not happy with something, I’ve learnt that you don’t start flailing about; you go in quietly, and there’s a conversation.

There always seems to be an element of faith in my writing.

When I was 18, I suddenly became very, very religious. I became an evangelical Christian; I was celibate for five years.

I don’t actually believe in the genre of comedy. Sometimes when I watch comedies, I can’t see the soul of the show. I want to be able to laugh and cry. That is where the magic is. I’m trying to get to that place.