Send us your questions for Michaela Coel

In September, the acclaimed actor, screenwriter and director Michaela Coel will publish her debut book, Misfits: A Personal Manifesto (Ebury Press, £9.99). It will draw on her 2018 MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV festival, in which she talked about feeling like an outsider, and made a case for embracing our differences rather than attempting to fit in.

Last year’s I May Destroy You, the 12-part BBC/HBO comedy-drama she created and starred in alongside Weruche Opia and Paapa Essiedu, addressed issues of consent and sexual assault, social media, race and class. It won two Baftas and three Bafta Crafts awards and is nominated for nine Emmys. The Guardian named it the best show of 2020.

She has appeared in numerous other TV series including her Bafta-winning E4 sitcom Chewing Gum, Top Boy, Black Mirror and Black Earth Rising, and in films including Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Been So Long. She has been cast in the forthcoming Marvel film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Share your questions

The Observer New Review will be interviewing Coel ahead of the book’s publication, and we are offering readers the chance to ask her a question. If you’d like to get involved, please post your question in the form below by 4pm (BST), Thursday 5 August.

Here are some quotes to get you started:

“I don’t actually believe in the genre of comedy. Sometimes, when I watch comedies, I can’t see the soul of the show. I want to be able to laugh and cry. That is where the magic is. I’m trying to get to that place.”

“One thing I am quite passionate about is the absence of dark-skinned women in the media, so I have a passion to show dark-skinned women as beautiful, as vulnerable, as people who can be sexually desired and loving people, because it is never really seen on TV.”

“Don’t sit there and complain. Rub your hands together and figure out what to do.”

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