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She also wrote and starred in Chewing Gum Dreams, a 45-minute one-woman show which would grow into
her first TV series following performances at London theatres, including the National.
HER BAFTA-WINNING BREAKOUT
Coel in Chewing Gum, her Channel 4 series based on her stage show Chewing Gum Dreams. Coel won two
BAFTAs for the show, in which she starred as teenager Tracey (pictured)
Producers at Retort, which is owned by FreemantleMedia, contacted Coel and asked if she would adapt
Chewing Gum Dreams for TV.
The play became Chewing Gum, an award-winning 12-episode comedy about a teenage girl (Coel)
desperate to lose her virginity.
The show premiered on Channel 4 in 2015, when Coel was 28, and the following year she won two BAFTAs:
Best Female Comedy Performance and Breakthrough Talent for her writing. Series two of Chewing Gum
premiered in 2017.
The success of Chewing Gum brought new opportunities to Coel. She appeared in two episodes of Charlie
Brooker's Black Mirror and in E4 sci-fi comedy The Aliens.
In 2018 she landed a lead role in Black Earth Rising, a BBC and Netflix production about the prosecution of
international war criminals, and in musical drama Been So Long, which was released on Netflix in October
last year.
By that time she had already started shopping her next big project, what would become I Will Destroy You.
TURNING DOWN A $1MILLION NETFLIX DEAL
When Coel began pitching I May Destroy You in the spring of 2017 she was offered a $1million deal from
streaming behemoth Netflix but turned it down in order to retain rights over the series.
Speaking in an interview with Vulture, last week she recalled the moment she asked a Netflix development
executive if she could retain even 5 per cent of the rights.
'There was just silence on the phone. And she said, 'It’s not how we do things here. Nobody does that, it’s not
a big deal,"' Coel said. 'I said, "If it’s not a big deal, then I’d really like to have 5 percent of my rights,"'.
