In Reunited, Awards Insider hosts a conversation between two Emmy nominees who have collaborated on a previous project. In the first installment of this new series, we speak with I May Destroy You’s creator and star, Michaela Coel, and Genius: Aretha actor Cynthia Erivo, who previously worked together on Coel’s series Chewing Gum.
Michaela Coel and Cynthia Erivo can’t remember exactly where they met.
When the two hop on a Zoom in early August, they spend the first few minutes going back and forth about it. “Was it because of dance?” asks Erivo. “Dance?” says Coel with a skeptical look on her face. No, Coel thinks it was at Theatre Royal, a theater in East London where they both worked at the box office and front of house back in 2006 or 2007. But wait! Erivo remembers they were introduced through Coel’s cousin, and then Erivo was a dancer for a live performance of Coel’s Fixing Barbie, an album she released in 2009.
While the details may be hazy, the emotional connection between the pair of British actors, who also appeared together onscreen in Coel’s 2015 series, Chewing Gum, is very clear. They spend some time chatting about hair (“Do you know what I think is really lovely? When your hair is black and your eyebrows are blonde. I think that looks incredible on you,” says Erivo) before diving into a deep conversation that explores power dynamics on set, the emotional weight of telling a personal story, and the scar tissue that can remain after playing a part.
Brought together now because of their Emmy nominations (Coel, 33, earned four Emmy nominations for her semi-autobiographical limited series, I May Destroy You, and Erivo, 34, landed a nod for lead actress in an anthology series for Genius: Aretha), the two are able to reflect on their journeys through theater and TV and the bond that has helped uplift them both when they felt no one else was able to understand what it takes to tell these stories.
Vanity Fair: Cynthia, Chewing Gum was your first TV project, is that right?
Cynthia Erivo: Yeah.
Michaela Coel: That’s my claim to fame. I cast Cynthia in her first ever TV role. I gave you a whole one line.
Erivo: I was very pleased with my one line!
Coming from the stage, did you have any nerves about working in this new format?
Erivo: I didn’t feel nervous because it was hers. I felt really comfortable with her being there. I felt safe.
Coel: Yeah. And there were moments where—I mean, can we talk about this?
Erivo: Yeah, course. Talk about it.
Coel: There was a situation where the director kept calling you and another incredible actress “twins.” And you came to me.
Erivo: I was like, “They keep calling us twins. I don’t think they know our names.”
Coel: That’s probably the first time I understood, at least I can try and exercise power to stop really fucked up shit from happening. So, it wasn’t that successful, that attempt that I made. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to go sort this out.” That was difficult. Were you there when he shouted at me?
Erivo: I don’t think I was! He shouted at you?
Coel: Yeah. It was the only time I left set. I cried in my trailer and then I left. For me, being relatively young, being very Black, being dark-skinned, being not the tallest in the room, being from working class backgrounds, you work, and show by show, movie by movie—I think there’s a subconscious thing of trying to earn the right to be respected.
Erivo: Yep. Every time.
Coel: It’s only when I was yelled at and it suddenly is like, everything stripped away—all of the things.
Erivo: All of the work that you’ve done, yeah. Oh, I haven’t told you about this. I had that when I was on The Color Purple on Broadway. If someone leaves, they just replace them without really talking to anyone. So, I’m playing Celie, and they’re replacing Shug, who is my co-star. I have no idea who’s coming in until the week they’re coming in. And this was the third time around they’re replacing. The producer announces on the stage who’s replacing Heather [Headley], and I have no idea. And I remember going, “Why wouldn’t you tell me?” It was after a show that the producer told us, on the stage. And I remember going, “Well, do you mind if we talk about this?” And he was like, “Yes.” And then he sneaks off so I can’t find him. But I see him walking off and I follow him.
Coel: With your little fast legs.
Erivo: With my little fast legs. I follow him, and I call out to him, I call his name, I call his name. He ignores me. He doesn’t stop. This man at the end of the corridor goes, “She’s calling you.” So, he stops, turns around, comes back. And I go, “Why wouldn’t you tell me what’s going on?” and he flies off the handle. Yells at me in the corridor, points at my face, says, “You don’t have the right to talk to me like this. You just do this show.” And Michaela, this is after I’ve won the Tony. The show itself has won a Tony. And I’m now annoyed. I’m like, “I can’t believe this. You don’t care about me or the show. You care about the fact that you’ve won. Now you’ve won your Tony, and I don’t matter. I don’t matter because you won the thing.” And it was that moment for me that, all the work, all of the stuff I had done to at least gain the respect of the people I’m working with went out the window.
Coel: That’s not easy, man. I’m sorry that happened, on a show so pivotal to your career, and a show that you were so pivotal for. But yeah, that feeling, stripped away, naked.
Erivo: It’s the most...I can’t imagine, to be on your own set and be like, “What the fuck just happened?”
Coel: Yeah, because what it does is it can make you feel like you’re not important or instrumental in that person’s eyes. And that may be true. It may be true that in that producer’s eyes, I am just an actor, and I am expendable, and I am replaceable. But if that is your view, your job is to never let me find that thing out.
At the point you’re at now, do you still have that feeling of needing to prove yourself that you just spoke of, or do you feel like that has gone away?
Erivo: Honestly, for me, it’s a 50/50. There are definitely times when you’re like, I’m still trying to prove that I’m good enough. And then there are times that it’s just like, fuck it, I’m just going to be what I am, and if you like it, then great, and if you don’t, I don’t know what to tell you. However, I think there’s always a want to... And that might be small man syndrome, because when you’re a tiny person, always the small person in the room, it’s always a fight for people to see you fully, I think. I don’t know.
Coel: I wish that I had a little bit of that. It’s all gone.
Erivo: Really, babe?
Coel: I could be real chill, just moving back in with my mum, chilling out, reading books. Now, it’s like I only want to make a show or project if it is absolutely necessary. If I feel like an audience, the world, or whoever is watching, needs to know about this thing. I think it’s [I May Destroy You]—I have been listened to on a worldwide scale. People have listened to my life, they’ve listened to the lives of my friends who inspired a lot of the show. So now it’s like, “oh, I’m done.” So, now my attention has totally come off of me, and it’s gone everywhere else. And within that work, my thing is, I just want to make a story that serves the story. The story, it has really become like a god to me. I have to prove myself to that god, and that journey is so irrelevant of TV, of the audience. That just is me and fucking God.
Erivo: Do you know what? This is probably the first time that I’ve gone, “oh, I’m not crazy.” So, my journey is with the characters I pick. So people go, “Why are you picking another historical character,” and you’re like, “I don’t think I’m picking the characters. I think the characters are picking me.” These are people I have never met before, and I want other people to meet them. So, for me, no one’s met Aretha. No one’s met her. They’ve met her singing, they’ve met her music. But they don’t know the human.
When you say, “That’s between me and God,” and that is a cost, sometimes, to your sanity, that is so very true. When you sit for an hour or two with one piece of music and you listen over and over and over again, and it’s not even just, “I’m going to listen to the whole song through.” It’s listening to first line 20 times. Then you listen to the second line 20 times. You go back to the beginning, you listen to that, and you go back to the next line. You go back and you listen for the breaths. You look like a crazy person. You look like your sanity has left you, because it’s the only way to get in touch with the person. You’re having conversations with the person, even though they’re not even there. That is because I care enough to make sure that that person is met.
Coel: And so, how are you now? When it finishes, and you have to say goodbye, what is that process like?
Erivo: Long, really long. Because they don’t go away immediately.
Coel: Do they ever go away?
Erivo: I don’t know if they ever...Why do I feel emotional? [Pause] They don’t go away.
Coel: It’s okay, sis. I wish I was there to hug you. Take your time.
Erivo: You get to the end of something, and you want two things: you want them to leave, and you also don’t want them go away, because you spent so long with them that they become part of you. It’s a weird sort of love and repulsion that happens all at once. When I did Harriet, I became really depressed afterwards because I was both exhausted and tired, and hurt physically. Not just for me, but for her, because I understood fully. And this time around, it took me ages before I could listen to [Aretha Franklin’s] music again.
Coel: Why did it take you ages to listen to the music again?
Erivo: Because it’s an auditory reminder of all the things I’ve had to learn, all the things I had to know about her. Because her music isn’t just songs, it’s words. It’s her voice. I’m listening to her voice over and over again. You know when people scratch in trees? That’s what it's like. So it’s like picking at a wound.
Coel: Wow. I can identify with that. Do you get to talk about this stuff much?
Erivo: Not very often. People don’t ask. It’s really hard to describe, because it’s a lot of things at once. I just know that they don’t leave. They don’t leave quickly, and when it feels like they have left, they haven’t. There’s always a bit of you that is filled with them now.
Coel: It reminds me of when I played Kate Ashby in Black Earth Rising. I knew that I would have some problems letting go, so I actually bought a book called Letting Go. And what happened was, we were supposed to finish in December or something, but then there was a huge and terrible accident on set. We lost our DOP in a stunt that went wrong. Then I think three days later when we were packing up to leave, we were shooting in Ghana at the time, I turned to my friend and I said, “That means I’m not Kate Ashby.” And I had an absolute breakdown. I wasn’t prepared for goodbye. I wonder whether there’s... What is going to help us psychologically come out of these roles, because it’s so much to do with mental health, isn’t it?
Erivo: Yeah.
Coel: With I May Destroy You, we had a therapist on set. But because what we do that you don’t do if you’re, I don’t know, a banker, is become this thing, create this little world, and then just put a nuclear bomb in it and it’s done, it’s actually quite challenging, and I think it would be good if there was some kind of...
Erivo: ...step by step way to… because I think people don’t realize that when you do that, your body doesn’t know the difference. Your body doesn’t know that you are not playing you. Your body believes that whatever is happening to you is real. So, it will leave real scars. And there’s nothing on the outside world, there’s nothing externally to tell your body, “Hey, this was not real, so we’re going to leave this behind and we don’t need it anymore.”
Coel: But also, it’s weird, but I feel so glad and grateful that we’re able to immerse ourselves into someone so deeply that we lose sense of ourselves. That is what people call flow state. You’re able to do something and lose track of reality, lose track of time, lose track because you are so focused on this thing. That is a beautiful thing to be able to experience at the same time.
Erivo: Yeah. I think it’s the ability to, and I guess I loathe to use this particular phrase because it feels cliché, but the ability to become one with the intention that you’re setting. You know what I mean?
Coel: Yeah. It’s interesting. And what also blows my mind are the people who do this, do it so well, then come home, cook their kids dinner, put their children to bed, spend a bit of time with the spouse.
Erivo: How?
Coel: Wow. That’s goals. I don’t know. They do both, I’m not sure. When it’s family time for me, I’m like, “we checking out of all this shit. See you later, Hollywood. Don’t call me now.” [Laughs]
It is astounding to me. And you have played all of these super brilliant, gifted, traumatized characters, and your ability to move on from one project to the next, and like I said, surprise, you’ve done it again but it’s a whole new thing. I know you have people around you, you’ve got me, who love you and are able to make themselves available to you when you need us. I know you have people there and I’m just very glad that you have a support network and family around you, and I am honored to be in that circle.
Erivo: I love you.
Coel: I fucking love you, man.
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