Page 255 - Guildhall School Media Highlights Coverage Book - 2019-2020

28 May 2020

Interview
Paapa Essiedu: 'Michaela Coel captures the

reality of lives that I recognise'

Claire Armitstead
Paapa Essiedu

Since his electrifying breakthrough as a hip-hopping Hamlet, the actor hasn’t stopped. He
talks about overcoming challenges and his role in the provocative new BBC series from the
creator of Chewing Gum

‘You’ve got to remember at the end of the day that it’s still acting’: Paapa Essiedu. Photograph: Suki Dhanda for New
Review

At the moment when his best friend is being interviewed about a traumatic sexual assault, Kwame – a
hunky young gym instructor – is rattling the cubicles of a public toilet with a stranger he has picked up on
Grindr. Minutes later he is fielding a tentative pass from another man, who confesses: “I never really spoke
to a brother who was…” To which Kwame replies: “Go on, you can say it. We’re in Britain. No one’s going to
throw me off a building...”

The line is delivered by actor Paapa Essiedu with such glowing self-confidence that it takes a few seconds
for the layers of irony to sink in. We’re four episodes into I May Destroy You, a topical new TV series
from Michaela Coel, the Bafta-winning creator of Channel 4’s Chewing Gum, and it is true that the dangers
that lurk for Kwame, and his friend Arabella, are more insidious than those that are often served up by
chroniclers of black British experience. Coel, who also co-directs and stars as Arabella, faces down the perils
intrinsic to the lifestyle of a young, multicultural generation high on chemicals, partying and casual sex.

For Essiedu, this means a deep dive into what masculinity means when its boundaries are broken, not by
racist thugs or harassing police, but by demons unleashed by its own desires. “I’m into everything,” boasts
Kwame on another casual date, minutes before he is reduced to pleading: “Not that.” The representation of
the moment when good sex turns bad is so up-close and personal that I wonder if he had any doubts about
taking on the role?