'And she said, "It’s not how we do things here. 'There was just silence on the phone,' she says.
It may be business as usual, but is it right? Is it good? Coel recalls one clarifying moment when she spoke with a senior-level development executive at Netflix and asked if she could retain at least 5 percent of her rights.
#I MAY DESTROY YOU CREATOR MICHAELA CRACK#
She has discovered that the explanation is where people begin to falter and the fissures of conventional wisdom crack wider. She is eager, almost giddy, to say she doesn’t know something (even if she may have an inkling) because of the way it forces someone else to explain it to her. Throughout the fallout with Netflix and CAA, Coel asked questions relentlessly. She fired CAA, her agency in the U.S., too, when it tried to push her to take the deal after she learned it would be making an undisclosed amount on the back end. ('Something about it didn’t feel clean.') When she first began pitching the concept for I May Destroy You in spring 2017, Netflix offered her $1 million upfront - $1 million! But when she learned they wouldn’t allow her to retain any percentage of the copyright, she said no. She declined to do a third season of Chewing Gum and an offer to have a production company under the now-defunct Retort. "This time around, she wanted transparency from her collaborators," writes Jung. Alex Jung shares the lesson Coel learned while shopping the show that would end up on BBC and HBO. In a profile of the Chewing Gum and I May Destroy You star and creator, Vulture's E.