It's this beautiful mesh and it's so hard to articulate and dissect.”Ĭoel initially broke out with Chewing Gum, an irreverent mid-2010s comedy about Tracey Gordon, a 24-year-old woman determined to lose her virginity. “As it began to do that, it began to hold a mirror up to me, which is where it does become quite meta, in that it becomes very hard to know where Arabella is beginning and where I'm ending. It’s no wonder, then, that Coel, speaking to me from London over Zoom last month, referred to her experience writing the show as “incredibly therapeutic.” “The show definitely made me think very deeply about my perspective of the world and of myself,” she said. A precisely-crafted protagonist created to serve as a cipher for reliving Coel’s trauma, Arabella can confront her rapist in person and on the page. Coel may not ever get the justice she wants from the man who assaulted her, but Arabella can. Each imagined scenario, it turned out, was a cognitive projection of a possible denouement to the novel Arabella had spent the entire season struggling to finish.īut it also felt cathartic, a clear testament to the power of art and its ability to offer us all the opportunity to rewrite our own histories. Utterly transfixing in its execution, it was one of the most thoughtful conclusions for a TV show that always seemed impossible to close out. I May Destroy You’s first eleven episodes were also dizzyingly hypnotic, but the finale, in particular, played out like a Lynchian fever-dream - it stopped and restarted with no warning, morphing from one imagined reality to another while forgoing any delineation between them, trusting that the audience would eventually pick it up. It takes a while to register that these are merely mental renderings of fictional scenarios. From there, the episode then distorts into a series of dreamlike sequences, tracing Arabella as she imagines confronting her assailant in a number of different ways. Immediately, the once-foggy memory of what, exactly, befell her that fateful night crystallizes into clear focus. In the finale, Arabella finally recognizes the man who drugged and raped her in the pilot. In its pursuit to tell the story of writer’s block-addled author Arabella Essiedu and her efforts to process the trauma of a rape she barely remembers, the freshman HBO series - a meta examination of creator, writer and star Michaela Coel’s own experience with sexual assault - has consistently upended expectations.īut in its closing half-hour, the show warps into something even more spellbinding. The series got Essiedu thinking about issues of consent, as well as “the stories that we allow ourselves to represent or see.I May Destroy You can only be described as beguiling. And I think that's something thats a journey that Kwame really goes on.” And the most important thing is to be able to sit in your response. In the process, Essiedu said, the main idea he absorbed was, “There is no right way to respond to trauma, and there’s no expected way to respond to it. Coming out of the production, she added, “I have had to address my thoughts on sexual assault I have had to learn about the different kinds of it to be aware.”Įssiedu, whose character is assaulted partway through the series, prepared for the role by speaking with friends and others who had survived similar experiences to Kwame. Working on the series, Opia said, highlighted just how important self care and support systems can be in processing a trauma. And coming away from I May Destroy You, both Essiedu and Opia found that their understanding of questions of trauma and consent had, indeed, shifted. On-set rapport is always a good thing, but it’s especially vital on a project where the stakes are so high and the subject matter so fraught. Coel, she said, “highlighted the fact that nobody was a villain in the stories and placed huge importance on the humanity of each character.” Weruche Opia, who plays Terry, credited Coel’s writing with setting the tone for the show’s imperfect but forgiving friendships. And Coel, it seems, knew that better than anyone. A series like I May Destroy You can only work if Arabella’s support system is both complex and believable. It’s a journey its creator and star, Coel, knows all too well as the multi-hyphenate has publicly discussed, she was assaulted during the production of her Britcom Chewing Gum.Īlthough I May Destroy You revolves around Arabella, her friendships are perhaps the show’s most striking feat they’re some of the best-written relationships in TV history. In 12 bracing episodes, I May Destroy You explores questions of trauma, consent, and recovery. All I will say is this: When Arabella and Terry huddle together in a bar bathroom, murmuring “The alliance is spicy” one last time, chills ran up my spine. Let me get this out of the way now: I will not spoil anything about the stellar finale of Michaela Coel’s gut-wrenching drama I May Destroy You here.
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