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I May Destroy You is the story Michaela Coel had to tell. It’s part of her process of recovery, and it’s
part of her mission to amplify conversations about sexual consent, sexual assault, self-destructive
behaviour, male abuse of power and the proliferating use of date-rape drugs.

Was anyone charged with the crimes committed against her? “No,” she replies flatly. “It was a year
and three months of brilliant work by the investigators but they were never found.”

The suspects were identified, because there were cameras in the bar. But, nonetheless, nobody was
brought to justice. That, she says, is “very common. This is the way it normally is. But the miracle is,
I had a flash [of memory]. The miracle is I happened to realise. The way this normally is, nothing is
ever done because nobody really remembers.”

Does she know what physically happened to her? Pause. “Um, I do. But I don’t know how useful it
is for us to go into that. What I would love when people watch this show, is to try and see
themselves. There are so many characters. Look for yourself, and separate me, and look at this
world. Because it’s so common. I realised that my experiences are the experiences of millions of
women and men.”

Michaela Coel in I May Destroy You (BBC) BBC
It’s a facile question, one I apologise for asking, but: how did this experience change Michaela
Coel? Did it make a confident, out-going person much more guarded?

“No, no I didn’t. I definitely had…” She stops, then starts again. “It’s very scary and it’s very
shocking because it’s a traumatic event. But people generally react in different ways to things.
Something can make you retreat. But also there’s this idea of running into [something]… you just
keep going into it, I won’t back down, I’m gonna start boxing, I’m gonna start running… It’s coping
mechanisms, isn’t it?”

She agrees that creating these stories and these characters was also part of her coping mechanism.
“It’s not a conscious thing [of]: ‘In order to cope, I’m gonna write this show,’” she clarifies. “But I’ve
always written based on something inspiring me from reality, with everything I’ve done, even as a
poet. So the inception of it was something true. But then it became this huge story of all these