I hadn’t read anything like it before, so I was really excited to work with her on this. There were tweaks but when I was watching it, I was like, Michaela really cared about the structure of each segment. “Remarkably, the scripts didn’t change all too much, which is a pretty rare thing these days. I just couldn’t stop, it felt unlike anything I had read before and so important. Then they said that they’d like to see me for Nilufer and I read all of the scripts in about 24 hours. “I originally auditioned for Francine and didn’t have any scripts. It’s good to be able to be in creative control of your projects and pull on other talents that you have to be able to head an entire project from writer, director, actress, producer.”Ĭhanda plays Nilufer, Kwame’s homophobic Tinder date. “Also, I was a Poet Laureate when I was younger and Michaela is a poet as well, so it’s shown me the possibilities of how far you can go if you’re multifaceted. So being able to be part of a project like I May Destroy You makes you see it’s more than within our capabilities to be able to create the changes that we want to see. It’s like, what if I’m cast in a role and I’m playing a stereotype? When you see so much negativity surrounding a subject, you kind of think that there’s no space for you. “When you’re training to be an actor, it can be a scary thing. I only met once, after I had filmed most of my scenes, but just from reading the scripts, I could see how realistic it would be and what these characters represented. “I had been sent all the scripts for the series so I was familiar with what ‘older Terry’ would be like as well. We clicked really well and quickly, especially in the classroom scene where we were just throwing around the popcorn. “It wasn’t that long ago that I was a teenager, so it wasn’t too difficult to get into playing teenage Terry. We were in the school uniforms and had the Just Do It bags, everything was so authentic and we were filming in a school as well, so it felt like I was actually back in secondary school. I’m there like, ‘Jesus Christ, not really though.’” I had my music in, walking down the street and this one girl ran over the road and was like, ‘Oh my god you’re the rapist!’. My initial worry was people wanting to beat me up or something, but no, I only had one awkward encounter. “I wasn’t expecting the reaction to it to be so positive. All of our scenes had an intimacy director as well, so you felt comfortable doing stuff where you might feel a bit timid or you don’t want to make the other person feel awkward. She had time for everyone, I was like, ‘Michaela, you must go home and club baby penguins because you can’t be this nice all the time’. She was exemplary with every single person, from extras to producers. I sent a couple of emails, asking if this was the angle so I could see it from Arabella’s perspective. “I loved that interpretive ending, but honestly, my first initial thought was ‘what the hell is going on?’.
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