It will be a while before she can acknowledge that the image is a memory. Somehow, she meets her deadline, but the next day a reel of horrible action colonizes her brain: a man, sweating and panting, thrusting in a bathroom stall. Is the scene comedic? Then a temporal blackness: Arabella bolts awake at her writing desk, a gash on her forehead. Arabella dizzily claws her way to the door. At some point, the bar begins to disintegrate and blur. A late-night crew parties and shares a round of shots. She and an acquaintance drift to a place called Ego Death Bar.
I may destroy you michaela crossword series#
In the pilot of “I May Destroy You,” a mesmerizing twelve-episode series for HBO and BBC One, written and co-directed by the aggressively free-minded Michaela Coel, Arabella (Coel), a young East London writer who owes her book agents a draft, abandons her laptop and slips into the night-just for an hour. What remains consistent is that through it all, it’s impossible to look away.Who hasn’t been there? A deadline looms, but inspiration won’t come. Sometimes it’s sad sometimes it’s gut-wrenching sometimes it’s improbably funny. I May Destroy You’s funniest moments come when the three are together, playing around and teasing one another with an ease that can make the whole production seem effortless.īut the show’s greatest triumph is how thoroughly and intuitively it expresses the difficult themes at its center. Opia, meanwhile, plays Terry with a refreshing dash of feistiness.
As Kwame, Essiedu brings a casual charisma that, as we gradually find out, can belie his character’s fragility. As Arabella and Kwame each realize late in the series, our self-perceptions and vulnerabilities shape how we interact with other people-and, at times, can lead us to harm and violate others without even realizing it.īoth Essiedu and Opia imbue their roles with impressive nuance and specificity. The two become inextricably intertwined, particularly after Arabella’s friend Kwame survives his own sexual assault. The series frequently raises questions about consent, but its primary interest seems to lie in identity formation-the ways in which we see ourselves, and how our experiences can shape that. “The series is not exactly a drama or a comedy, and it’s definitely not a ‘dramedy.’ What it is, however, is frank-sometimes excruciatingly so, and sometimes hilariously so.”īut it would be reductive to say that I May Destroy You is solely about sexual assault.
The series is not exactly a drama or a comedy, and it’s definitely not a “dramedy.” What it is, however, is frank-sometimes excruciatingly so, and sometimes hilariously so. The tone shifts with her character’s psyche, articulating wordlessly, at times, how volatile the world can feel when someone is still raw with trauma. But Coel’s performance is both complex and utterly convincing, providing a reliable gravitational center. At times, it can feel a little overstuffed. After her assault, she dives deeper into social media, which provides far more validating interactions than her impatient publishers but also brings its own destructive side effects.Īrabella’s mental and emotional states tend to fluctuate wildly, carrying the series with them with a less capable actor at its center, I May Destroy You would feel aimless. When we meet her, however, she’s banging her head against a wall (metaphorically) as she attempts to draft a follow-up novel for the publishers who have now opened their doors to her.
Arabella is a celebrity to a certain millennial set she came up as a voice-y writer on the internet and self-published her first book.
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