00:00Like most of the world, I was not ready for Michaela Cole.
00:04My introduction to her was via Chewing Gum,
00:07her irreverent, smart, and funny series
00:10that was unlike anything I'd seen before.
00:12I had wanted more of her wit, her talent, that brilliant mind.
00:18But we would have to wait some time to meet her again.
00:22And now we know why.
00:23I've often said that trauma halts possibility.
00:27It serves to impede, to block, and to halt forward movement in one's own life.
00:33I May Destroy You tells the story of a survivor
00:36who finds herself impeded by the kind of insidious sexual assault
00:41that is endemic in our communities.
00:44It is so routine that survivors often don't need any help minimizing what's happened to us.
00:51We try to make space for everyone else, our friends and their discomfort,
00:55our families and their shame, the inner critic inside of us,
01:00louder than any slur anyone could hurl our way.
01:03This minimization is training for another kind of war,
01:07the one where no one cares what happened to you then or what happens to you now.
01:13It's no surprise then that we often have no idea what healing looks like,
01:18what reckoning actually means.
01:20We don't want to deal with the messy bits.
01:24We only want to tell tidy stories of improbable triumph.
01:27In doing so, we reduce the likelihood that anyone could possibly see themselves,
01:33their own journeys and struggles reflected in the tales we tell each other
01:37about how to make it through.
01:41I May Destroy You landed like the uncomfortable truth that it is.
01:45Because it was born out of Michaela's own truth,
01:49it is, in and of itself, an exorcism of the demons that were never hers to carry.
01:56And in doing so, she has given us an important and new way of looking at healing,
02:03of seeing ourselves.
02:05Trauma halts possibility, but it is movement that activate it.
02:10Michaela's work is an offering that has allowed countless people to speak openly
02:15about sexual assault, autonomy, freedom, allyship, and ourselves.
02:22To confront our contradictions with honesty and conviction.
02:26I May Destroy You initially seems like a threat, a warning.
02:33But it is only when you realize that it is an invitation to create something new,
02:40if we are willing, that you see the fullness of Michaela's intervention.
02:45As many Black women know, we often have the unenviable task
02:50of becoming the very women that we needed at one time or another.
02:56And when we invite that kind of transformative calling into our lives,
03:00we find that it was ourselves we were freeing all along.
03:05To the world, Michaela Cole is an amazing actress.
03:08But to me, she is also a necessary voice.
03:12Now, let's take a look at why this millennial icon
03:16is so deserving of this prestigious Black Woman in Hollywood Award.
03:31I first became aware of Michaela.
03:34We both auditioned for it and ended up going to Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.
03:39Michaela Cole first came on my radar when she used to do spoken word.
03:44Watch my new life as his soul transcends.
03:47See this rebirth as his light descends.
03:50Renewed and newborn, I am born again.
03:53Amen. Praise God.
03:57I first heard about Michaela in the chewing gum days.
04:03I saw that and I was immediately obsessed with her,
04:07who is this such a funny person,
04:12but also just so much immediate depth that was so obvious and so singular.
04:17Charingam came from, originally came from a very short solo piece.
04:23And the BAFTA goes to Michaela Cole.
04:25And then it became this, like, huge, you know, BAFTA-nominated, BAFTA-winning kind of, like, juggernaut of a thing.
04:33If there's anyone out there that looks a bit like me or just feels a little bit out of place,
04:37trying to get into performing and all this kind of stuff,
04:40I'd just say, you are beautiful.
04:42Embrace it.
04:43You are intelligent.
04:44Embrace it.
04:44You are powerful.
04:46Embrace it.
04:47I got to meet her, finally, when we worked together on Black Earth Rising.
04:54An extraordinary piece of TV.
04:56She is an actress.
04:58And I do actually do believe this thing.
05:01Those who can do comedy can do tragedy.
05:03It's not necessarily easier the other way around.
05:05Michaela's character Arabella in I May Destroy You is a young Black woman figuring her way out in the world.
05:12She's a writer.
05:14She's on the cusp of finishing a second book, trying to get her life together.
05:19And in the midst of this whole thing, she experiences sexual assault and she experiences trauma.
05:26I May Destroy You resonated with people because it was honest.
05:31It's a radical act of personal revelation and healing.
05:35The way she deals with trauma is just a thing of beauty because it's so triumphant.
05:43It's really hard to make something like that.
05:45And to make it extremely watchable and not just therapy is incredible.
05:51McKenna's future will be dictated by her.
05:54It won't be dictated by anybody else.
05:56I think she just wants to have space and time to continue developing her craft and sharing her encyclopedic library of thoughts.
06:06And I think we're all going to be delighted to get to see it.
06:10Massive congratulations, my friend Michaela Cole, on your Essence Black Women in Hollywood Award.
06:18I love you, Michaela.
06:19Congratulations.
06:20Congratulations on everything.
06:21Hopefully I'll see you soon after this whole COVID thing.
06:24I'm in London right now, so you've got to hit me up.
06:28So thank you for everything you've done for me and sharing everything you have with the world.
06:33This is Essence.
06:35This is fantastic.
06:37These women hold you up and say, keep going.
06:41Fly on, fly on, fly on.
06:44I love you.
06:54So, on behalf of anyone who has walked through the fire, for those who are still finding their way, but especially for those who couldn't, we thank you for stepping into the light for us, Michaela.
07:15It is my honor to present you with the Black Women in Hollywood Award.
07:25Thank you so much, Essence, for this moment to be honored and celebrated as a Black woman in Hollywood.
07:32The thing I have yet to reveal to Essence is that the time I've spent in Hollywood itself amounts to 12 days over the course of my life.
07:41Sorry.
07:42So it seems fitting that I take this opportunity to talk about those 12 days and the Black women who gave those days meaning.
07:50The first was a four-day trip.
07:53I had arrived to the Hollywood section of the Americas with severe jet lag and high hope to make a TV show.
08:00Chewing Gum Season 1 had just aired and its small but strong success got me a seat at the table with executive producers from an American network to pitch a show.
08:10I had no pilot, no treatment, no document at all.
08:13I only had a piece of information.
08:15A few months beforehand, my drink was spiked and I had been sexually assaulted by strangers.
08:20And at that table, I told the exec producers that I wanted to make a comedy-type thing about it.
08:26I knew, despite being unaware of my own shock and denial, that I would have to write about it in order to avoid dying from it.
08:34When I look back on that meeting, I think the executives deemed me unstable.
08:40Maybe the frantic, terrified eyes.
08:42Maybe because I had no treatment or pilot.
08:45Maybe they came to know that shortly after the meeting, I was found sleeping behind a truck on the premises.
08:51The jet lag was just too much and it was so hot.
08:54So I crouched down and slept on the ground.
08:57I don't know if I would make a show with me.
08:59To the sister who woke me up and got me a bottle of water, thank you.
09:03The second was a four-day trip in 2017.
09:08I had a photo shoot.
09:10It was the first time both my hair and makeup had been done by black women on a shoot and I looked amazing.
09:16Navasha Johnson gave me the lace wig and Tasha Brown told me that the orange blusher in the NARS palette was the only way to be free.
09:23By this time, I had struck up an Instagram friendship with Issa Rae.
09:27I had told her I was coming to the Americas and asked her to go on a date with me to Soul Quirius Music Festival.
09:34She agreed, assuming I was sane.
09:37I tried to lay that wig again for the festival and it looked as awesome as Arabella's looks in I May Destroy You.
09:43I was so excited to be alive, to be there, to be with Issa and the gin I was consuming was just a way of allowing any nervousness that came with that excitement to subside.
09:54Cynthia Erivo, a trusted friend and most seasoned expert to Hollywood, was trying to advise me how to act right but I had no time for that.
10:02Then I lost concept of time altogether.
10:05I don't recall who I bought the weed muffin from.
10:08Neither do I recall things like music or performances at the festival.
10:12I only remember meeting Willow Smith, thinking, wow, she's so welcoming and nice.
10:17And why is the guitar on her back able to wave hello and smile at me?
10:21Issa, I suspect being around me might have been quite a traumatic experience.
10:26Thank you for still replying to my texts because I don't know if I would.
10:30The third was a two-day trip in 2018.
10:33I had now gotten through five or so drafts of the show we would come to know as I May Destroy You
10:37and was eager to partner with people of Hollywood to make this show happen.
10:41I spent two euphoric days pitching the show to studio after studio and walking on a beach
10:47because there's a beach near where people make TV in Hollywood, which is absolutely insane.
10:52My last meeting was with HBO and it was going really well.
10:56The exec producer asked me if I remembered her.
10:59I suddenly realised I had been here two years before with frantic, terrified eyes,
11:05where I was woken up, given water.
11:07I suddenly realised how much I had grown.
11:10The final trip was also in 2018.
11:13By now my work in Chewing Gum, Black Mirror and Black Earth Rising had allowed me access
11:17into a circle of black women in Hollywood, none of whom were aware I was both unhinged and obsessed with them.
11:23I was doing small, small DMs of Lena Waithe, Bobby Humphrey, Zendaya, Gabrielle Union, Ari Lennart, Jada Pinkett.
11:31One day Janelle Monáe DM'd me to say she'd planned a small friends-only private screening of Dirty Computer.
11:37It was that night and I was welcome to swing by.
11:40I decided not to tell her that I'd been to every single music concert of hers in England,
11:44that I'd had numerous dreams about meeting her,
11:47that I had to unfollow her on Facebook back in the day because I was beginning to dress and sing like her
11:51and I was losing my sense of self to her magic.
11:55I decided not to tell her that I wasn't actually in Hollywood so I couldn't swing by.
11:59I instead found a flight, booked a one-way ticket and went straight from the airport to the movie theatre.
12:06I met Lena Waithe and we hugged as if we'd hugged a hundred times before.
12:11I met Kelly Rowland, who knew my name and where in Africa I was from.
12:16That was so bizarre I began to catch migraine.
12:19Then I finally met Janelle Monáe and, well, she was like water.
12:25She flowed to everyone in the room without having to do anything.
12:30She was everything.
12:32When she came to know of the circumstances by which I came,
12:35she insisted I spent the night in the house she was currently residing in with her entire Wonderland music family.
12:41There was enough room for me.
12:43This is where my mind goes when I think of this honour essence.
12:47It goes to the black women who breathed life into those 12 days.
12:51I am a visitor with no firm idea of when or how or where I'm going,
12:56that I'm just eager to be here and I'm grateful for the invitation to sit down at your table,
13:01that I have been given room here, given water, warm welcomes, cuddles, loving emojis.
13:07There is only one thing to do with this honour.
13:11It is to honour you.
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