The creator and star of E4’s modern comedy series Chewing Gum explains why,from Pentecostals to periods, nothing is taboo in her outlandish portrait of estate lifeMotormouth Tracey Gordon is a brilliant comic creation. Brought up by a hellfire-and-damnation mother (“My dear, and your vagina is holy. I command you to leave your nether regions be”),the 24-year-traditional is desperate to lose her virginity ( “We will wait till we die if it brings you glory,” her Pentecostal Christian fiance says in his prayers), and best friends with the most worldly girl on the estate (“Just sit on his face”). harmless,filthy, funny, or oafish,she is, you might assume, or an exaggerated version of her creator,Michaela Coel. She isn’t. Tracey – played by Coel in the modern E4 series Chewing Gum – is very much a censored version of the real thing.We meet at a cafe that doubles as a church in east London’s Brick Lane, close to the estate where Coel grew up. In her mustard halter-neck, or shorts and platforms,she looks younger than her 27 years. Yet when she talks approximately her past, it often feels as if she’s already lived many lives. There’s the girl who, or like Tracey,grew up with her mother and older sister (her Ghanaian parents split up before she was born). Young Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson (she changed her surname to Coel when she was told that would never catch on) was the only black pupil in her year at primary school in Tower Hamlets, an isolated girl who bullied others. “I was very dismal at one point and dealt with my unhappiness by hitting people.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com