Chewing Gum's Michaela Coel says second series was delayed by sexual assault

BAFTA winning actress and screenwriter Michaela Coel says that she was sexually assaulted while writing her Channel 4 series Chewing Gum.

The 30-year-old, who has never publicly spoken about the assault before, spoke about her experience during her MacTaggart Lecture at the annual Edinburgh International Television Festival. Coel is the youngest person and first black woman to present the lecture in its 43 year history. 

Coel told the audience: "I had an episode due at 7 a.m. I took a break and had a drink with a good friend who was nearby. I emerged into consciousness typing season two, many hours later," she said.

"I was lucky. I had a flashback. It turned out I’d been sexually assaulted by strangers. The first people I called after the police, before my own family, were the producers."

 Coel said that the production company, Channel 4, paid for her to receive therapy sessions following the assault, but also noted that there were many aspects of her experience where she felt her needs were not properly acknowledged. 

She described the staff as "teetering back and forth between the line of knowing what normal human empathy is and not knowing what empathy is at all."

“When there are police involved, and footage, of people carrying your sleeping writer into dangerous places, when cuts are found, when there’s blood… what is your job?”

Although Coel says the deadline for the show was pushed back following her assault, "the head of comedy never found out why."

The Black Mirror star also spoke more broadly about the need for greater diversity in the television industry. She recounted one particular experience that involved a white member of the Chewing Gum cast having a trailer while five black actors were made to share. 

The screenwriter said she asked why the cast members had agreed to share, and found it was because "their belief in the job [was] only matched by their anxiety of losing it." 

Coel suggested that incidents such as these were a result of a lack of diversity among high ranking television executives and crews, meaning that no one would spot such errors. She said: "They didn't consider the experiences of the brown and black cast to meet the morals of their diversity compass, because they didn't think to see things from our point of view."

Coel also detailed a worrying incident of harassment from a television executive at an after party for an award show. 

She said that the unnamed executive told her, "Do you know how much I want to f––– you right now?"

Coel then left the party so quickly that she left her plus one, who later called upset because the same executive had "called him a n–––––."

She pondered: "Could my silence have encouraged this producer to push boundaries with women and black people further? This thought is uncomfortable, but I cannot block it out. I have to face it.”

Channel 4’s director of programmes, Ian Katz, released a response to Coel's lecture in which he called Coel's lecture "a powerful and important wake–up call" and said that "the experiences she has described in her lecture are not what we would want for anyone working with Channel 4 or any part of our industry."

Coel is currently working on a BBC series about sexual assault which is scheduled to broadcast in 2019. 

The Edinburgh International Television Festival runs until August 24.