When I arrive though, it seems all bets are off. I’ve been encouraged to pack my bathing suit she’s hoping we can squeeze in a dip before we eat. According to her, the grilled-fish platter at this one spot is worth the drive alone. Later in the day, after a well-deserved nap, I head out to join Coel for a sunset dinner in Kokrobite, a town on the Atlantic coast an hour away known for its white-sand beaches. Taking rest, learning to do that-learning to break,” she says.
“You know, every time I think about that, I think about my career. “Learning to break is the hardest part,” she says as I giggle nervously with embarrassment. Somehow, Coel manages to rescue me, grabbing both my elbows just in time to bring me to a stop. I fail to realize a pretty steep decline-and before I know it, I’ve lost control of my skates and, arms flailing, I’m zooming on a direct collision course with a garden fence. Mercifully, there are very few cars on the road and we quickly find ourselves cruising down a virtually deserted residential street. I do my best to keep pace as we skate past the organic grocery store where she buys all her vegan supplies, an upscale eatery called Bistro 22, and an Irish pub popular with the expat crowd. She navigates the streets like a local because she practically is one last year she lived around here for six months. Coel knows all the best routes in the city, and suggests we head to Cantonments, an affluent neighborhood with smooth tarmac perfect for Rollerblades. There’s a lack of anxiety.”īlack Panther is about “representation on a very mainstream platform,” Coel says, “about the magic of Africa, the magic of the people, our ancestors”īy midday I’m feeling less wobbly, and my teacher Rashaq thinks we’re ready to hit the road. There’s also a lot of peace, friendliness. “Yes, there are a lot of sad things poverty, unemployment, struggle. “I remember looking at all the kids playing and it hit me, like, Wow, this could’ve been me and I think I would have really enjoyed that,” she says. “A friend of mine was with me, and he remembers us getting off the plane and me walking around as if I knew where I was going.” On that trip, she traveled the length and breadth of the country, discovering places even her mother and father, who emigrated to London before she was born, didn’t know.
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“I’d been to Africa before-Kenya and Uganda-but when I came here I was really seeing people who looked like me,” says Coel, who first came to the West African country to film Black Earth Rising, Hugo Blick’s searing 2018 drama series about the Rwandan genocide. Skating is more than that though-it gives her a mind-body connection, a sense of liberation, especially here in Ghana, she says, where she moves with a particular kind of ease. For now though, the bucket hat is a fair compromise.Ĭoel has always been a fast learner, the type to throw herself headfirst into new challenges: As a teenager, she took up Irish dancing, the only Black girl in her London high school’s history to join the team, performing at the talent show the same year. “If my skate teacher saw you he’d be like, ‘Where’s the helmet?’ ” she says. With guards on my wrists and elbows and kneepads strapped over my baggy jeans, I look like an overgrown teenage boy. The pair I’ve chosen have small wheels-the better to keep me grounded, I think.
We’re in the parking lot of Decathlon, a sprawling French sports-supply store where she’s persuaded me to buy my first ’blades. “The balance is tough, but the enjoyment is max,” she says, grinning. She shows me her skates-white with gigantic lilac wheels-and tells me that big wheels equal great speed. Looking every inch the athlete, Coel shows up early for our meet, slender but strong in black running shorts and a sports bra, a purple baseball hat thrown over her closely cropped ’fro.
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It was a daredevil stunt suited more to an action movie than a Vogue cover shoot. The day before, in Accra’s historic Jamestown, I’d witnessed Coel flying through traffic on her skates, her polka-dot Burberry cape flapping wildly behind her, photographer Malick Bodian and his crew in hot pursuit. “Totally down for that, sounds like fun!!!” I respond via WhatsApp, adding one too many exclamation points out of apprehension. So I’m not all that surprised when the 35-year-old actor-writer-director suggests meeting for a Rollerblading session on a Sunday morning in Accra, Ghana’s capital city.
Michaela Coel doesn’t like to sit still she’s a self-described mover, the type to run a half-marathon in the middle of the night for fun.
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