One of the world’s most exciting creative talents Michaela Coel covers ELLE UK’s October/November 2021 issue. Celebrating her debut book ‘Misfits’ , dropping September 7 in America, Michael Coel channels Grace Jones in spectacular images lensed by Danny Kasirye. Styled by Avril Mair, Coel is interviewed by EIC Farrah Storr in ‘The Making of Michaela Coel’.

Michaela Coel knows that she is strange. So? Consider it her superpower.

In 2018, Coel walked from a $1m deal with Netflix as a relatively unknown talent delivering a drop-the-mic speech on race and sexism at the prestigious Edingburgh Festival. Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner and a pre-scandal Kevin Spacey preceded Coel in delivering James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture. They did not have the same impact.

Coel spoke with humour. With grace. With nuance. In Edinburgh.

Coel fired her agent for pressuring her to take the Netflix deal. Some said she would never work again, but Michael Coel is like a bullet train bearing down on us. She is relentless with a big, disarming smile. Like we said: consider her a superpower. Storr writes:

“Sucker-punching the world with her honesty. It was not an admonishment as such. She is too smart and empathetic for that. Instead, she documented, from her point of view, how it feels to be an outsider in an industry of insiders. What doors to gently push, which doors to knock down. How to respond to a world whose answer to everything is: That’s just the way it is.”

If you haven’t read AOC’s numerous articles on Michaela Coel, be sure to grab the entire interview at ELLE UK.

We skim interviews now, looking for new nuggets of insight and information about the lives of creatives and activists. Coel acknowledges in her interview that with success and a rising star, she is often more insulated from the reality and perils of her original condition. Still, there are many places where she can go unknown, to experience life in its evil spirits and tender glory.

In every aspect, Michaela Coel is a storyteller — and a truthteller — and we hope she is able to hold on ferociously to her gift for dancing under the moon. She says:

“I am a Black woman and that will always be true,’ she says. ‘And, for me, there is nothing like going to a different country where nobody knows me and experiencing the way security guards follow me around the pharmacy or the grocery shop. The dirty looks I receive, the fact that cars don’t want to stop on a zebra crossing. All these things reinstall that I am a Black woman. As long as these issues are still happening, I am happy to speak, because I could be deluded and forget that that’s a part of me. I’m really lucky that there are places where I’m not known and so it allows me to still experience it.”