So many of my memories revolve around TV.
— Michaela Coel
Growing up on our estate, we were all different colours, but we were all really poor. I never really realised that black was a problem for some people.
In comedy, I often see so many weird race jokes, and it's like, there is no racial diversity in your show to even make those race jokes. The problem is that there is no one in the back to say, 'Hey, that race joke is not really appropriate.'
I see my shows like Gandhi, and I've got little baby Gandhis, and they are changing the world. I know that I'm a bit delusional about that, but I do think of them like Gandhi. They are not celebrities: they are like Gandhi and Mother Teresa.
'Chewing Gum' is kind of like the world I wish I grew up in. There wasn't really a sense of community growing up.
I'm a Louis Theroux addict.
I'm very rational, so sometimes I need the facts, and if I don't have the facts, then I get huffy, and I move on.
We can put fear of the future in front of us to block us, or behind us to drive us forward. I feel like telling all the people who look like me to start trying to write. You don't know it's possible because it's not often in front of you.
The unpredictability of the weather, the increasing possibility of intelligence introducing a species more powerful than ours, the growing uncertainty that animals can or should be slaughtered for our pleasure, has led many of us to start asking more complex questions about what is and isn't normal.
To suggest things may be going on in our brains that we aren't fully conscious of, that we unknowingly make classist, sexist and racist presumptions... Well, there just aren't many comfortable ways to take that. And in the face of discomfort comes the mask of defence.
I don't believe in comedy as a TV genre - I think there's drama that is funny. Because beyond the laughs, there has to be cost, and there has to be heart.
Comedy in the past hasn't spoken to women because it wasn't written by women, and male writers don't make women three-dimensional characters. Too often, women just facilitate the man's comedy: they're not crazy; they're not funny. But women are as vulgar as they are elegant, as stinky as they are smelling of eau de parfum.
My generation of black British people often feels part American because of what we learned from TV.
It was only when I went to sixth-form college that I encountered boys.
What was nice for me was that when I got to secondary school - like high school - I met many other Ghanaian schoolgirls whose parents were also born in Ghana and were raising them here. We automatically had a huge kinship that was amazing.
I over-write!
I think you just have to do you, whatever that is, and not feel like you have to be a certain way for other people to like you.
I love listening to audiobooks - I always lose my glasses, but if I have an audiobook, I don't need them.
The first time I got into astrology was being in New York. I was like, 'Oh, this is a real thing here!' Now, I'll Google what your sign is and what my sign is to see the predictions of friendship, and I find that really cool. But that's the most I know.
To see people laughing or crying or listening, then being inspired to do their own thing? I can't think of anything better than that.
Socialisation is not optional. It's an inescapable contract, and our birth into the world is our signature of agreement. Norms and ideologies vary from society to society, and most of them weren't formed during our lifetimes but were handed down from one generation to the next.
In drama school, they do these big shows and period dramas, and I felt that none of those shows were representing me as a person, and I knew I wouldn't be cast in any of those when I left school. I decided to write my own one-woman show, and that was called 'Chewing Gum Dreams.'
When you've got African parents, you go to uni, do finance, and go into accounting. But I'm not good with systems. I dropped out in my final year of college to become a Christian poet. Then went back to do my A-levels and went to uni in Birmingham to do political science and theology. I lasted 12 weeks.
I feel that when you want to start attacking people or completely rejecting the people you see as not on the godly side, to me, that isn't God, and that isn't love.
I don't know what it would have been like to grow up with a man in the house.
When I think of the things that I want to write, I can never say them out loud because I know how crazy they sound. I know what things sound like when you haven't actually worked on the script, so I don't go around saying some of these ideas because they just sound awful.
If there's anyone out there that looks a bit like me, or just feels a little bit out of place just trying to get into performing, you are beautiful; embrace it. You are intelligent; embrace it. You are powerful; embrace it.
We live in this era where we really enjoy being offended, although only on the Internet. I don't know how beneficial it is. I wonder if we live in an age where we don't have power, yet somehow feel we have virtual power. But I feel like it's a distraction from real life.
I have to go to sleep with music.
Don't sit there and complain. Rub your hands together and figure out what to do.
Drama school taught me not to be precious.
It strikes me as odd that we've made journeys with our social conditioning in certain areas, but not in others. The world is always changing; discoveries in technology and science relentlessly expose our dearest values as fictions.
There always seems to be an element of faith in my writing.
At college, I became friends with this girl who was a 'cool Christian.' They did street dance, then they prayed. It became my whole world. I had Christian friends. I went to Christian parties.
