Page 271 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

She explained she went down from 2 per cent, to 1 per cent and 0.5 per cent but the media giant wouldn't
budge.

The creator even fired Creative Artists Agency (CAA), her US representation, after learning they had pushed
for her to take the Netflix deal because the agency would make an undisclosed amount on the back end of
the show.

The BBC eventually offered Coel everything she wanted, including rights over the show and total creative
control.

It is not known whether Coel has any future projects in the pipeline

A STORY INSPIRED BY HER OWN SEXUAL ASSAULT

I May Destroy You fictionalises Coel's own sexual assault, which took place during the writing of Chewing Gum.
Pictured, Arabella (Coel) in the hours after the assault on the show

I May Destroy You fictionalises Coel's own sexual assault, which took place during the writing of Chewing

Gum.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in 2018, Coel revealed: 'I was working overnight
in the [production] company’s offices; I had an episode due at 7am.' She recalled blacking out and coming to

consciousness hours later.

'I took a break and had a drink with a good friend who was nearby,' she continued. 'I emerged into
consciousness typing season two, many hours later. I was lucky. I had a flashback. It turned out I’d been

sexually assaulted by strangers. The first people I called after the police, before my own family, were the
producers.'

The production company, Retort, which is owned by FreemantleMedia, paid for Coel to undergo private

therapy and sent her to a private clinic.

Coel described how some of them were left uncertain as to how to handle the situation.

'Overnight, I saw them morph into an anxious team of employers and employees alike; teetering back and
forth between the line of knowing what normal human empathy is and not knowing what empathy is at all,'
she said. 'When there are police involved, and footage, of people carrying your sleeping writer into dangerous
places, when cuts are found, when there’s blood … what is your job?'