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" Where I grew up, in Aldgate, east London, one of the poorest boroughs in the country, I saw lots that was real - the bankers with their briefcases, the man next door with five wives, the illegal immigrants in Flat 5. I'm from a world you rarely see on screen, and I want to show it off. "

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" The environment on the 'Chewing Gum' set is where everyone can work to the best of their abilities and everyone is happy. So, if I'm not happy with something, I've learnt that you don't start flailing about; you go in quietly, and there's a conversation. "

Michaela Coel

" I believe there are some great things that I've taken from the Bible in terms of loving the world and trying to be kind. There are a lot of good things to take from the Bible, and I like to think I try to apply them to my life. "

Michaela Coel

" One thing I am quite passionate about is the absence of dark-skinned women in the media, so I have a passion to show dark-skinned women as beautiful, as vulnerable, as people who can be sexually desired and loving people, because it is never really seen on TV. "

Michaela Coel

" I love listening to audiobooks - I always lose my glasses, but if I have an audiobook, I don't need them. "

Michaela Coel

" My sets are not peaceful. It's a beautiful catastrophe. I am running around like a headless chicken. I don't sleep because I am writing. It's manic. "

Michaela Coel

" To see people laughing or crying or listening, then being inspired to do their own thing? I can't think of anything better than that. "

Michaela Coel

" I became a very passionate Christian when I was 17. I started writing and performing poetry at different venues across the U.K. I started performing from then, really. "

Michaela Coel

" When you've got African parents, you go to uni, do finance, and go into accounting. But I'm not good with systems. I dropped out in my final year of college to become a Christian poet. Then went back to do my A-levels and went to uni in Birmingham to do political science and theology. I lasted 12 weeks. "

Michaela Coel

" In Britain, we need to start presenting the option of being a writer in front of black women. We need to present the idea of being a writer into poorer communities because the majority of black people in this country are working class. We need to let working-class people know that their voices are important. "

Michaela Coel

" Comedy in the past hasn't spoken to women because it wasn't written by women, and male writers don't make women three-dimensional characters. Too often, women just facilitate the man's comedy: they're not crazy; they're not funny. But women are as vulgar as they are elegant, as stinky as they are smelling of eau de parfum. "

Michaela Coel

" It was only when I went to sixth-form college that I encountered boys. "

Michaela Coel

" Drama school taught me not to be precious. "

Michaela Coel

" Now I'm steeped in this world, I keep thinking going to the theatre every week is normal, but there's a whole world of people who don't go at all. I wrote 'Chewing Gum Dreams' for them - I'd love them to come. "

Michaela Coel

" I have to go to sleep with music. "

Michaela Coel

" Inequality starts in the womb. "

Michaela Coel

" 'Chewing Gum' is a sitcom set on an estate in east London. Its central character is a girl from a Pentecostal background who decides to embark on a more worldly lifestyle - it's about adolescence 10 years too late. In my dreams, everybody is watching it, finding out about my world and realising it's not what they imagined. That it's not terrifying. "

Michaela Coel

" What was nice for me was that when I got to secondary school - like high school - I met many other Ghanaian schoolgirls whose parents were also born in Ghana and were raising them here. We automatically had a huge kinship that was amazing. "

Michaela Coel

" I love Jeremy Corbyn, definitely. "

Michaela Coel

" I do like making people feel uncomfortable - it's separating the wheat from the chaff. "

Michaela Coel

" The unpredictability of the weather, the increasing possibility of intelligence introducing a species more powerful than ours, the growing uncertainty that animals can or should be slaughtered for our pleasure, has led many of us to start asking more complex questions about what is and isn't normal. "

Michaela Coel

" Men are trained to like this version of womanhood, and when someone comes along smashing the table and messing up the party, it's a bit like, 'Get out; why are you disturbing the peace?' "

Michaela Coel

" When I was 18, I suddenly became very, very religious. I became an evangelical Christian; I was celibate for five years. "

Michaela Coel

" I've been bullied about my appearance since forever. "

Michaela Coel

" Socialisation is not optional. It's an inescapable contract, and our birth into the world is our signature of agreement. Norms and ideologies vary from society to society, and most of them weren't formed during our lifetimes but were handed down from one generation to the next. "

Michaela Coel

" I think you just have to do you, whatever that is, and not feel like you have to be a certain way for other people to like you. "

Michaela Coel

" I am really weird. "

Michaela Coel

" You have to be true to your instinctive way of writing. You have to find your identity. "

Michaela Coel

" I wrote a play at drama school, which was a dark comedy - people laughed and cried. And then my script of one of the shows was picked up by a comedy sketch company... so then I had to write comedy. "

Michaela Coel

" I see my shows like Gandhi, and I've got little baby Gandhis, and they are changing the world. I know that I'm a bit delusional about that, but I do think of them like Gandhi. They are not celebrities: they are like Gandhi and Mother Teresa. "

Michaela Coel

" I don't know what it would have been like to grow up with a man in the house. "

Michaela Coel