I May Destroy You
I MAY DESTROY YOU / アイ・メイ・デストロイ・ユー
Discussed in the Journal
JournalConsent Is a Conversation That Keeps GoingStoryline
The whole story, ending included.
A writer reconstructs the night her drink was spiked; the most precise television made about consent.
Arabella Essiedu, a Londoner in her late twenties, found fame on Twitter and then with a first book, Chronicles of a Fed-Up Millennial. Her publishers want a draft of the second by morning. She takes a break for a drink with friends at a bar called Ego Death and wakes with a smashed phone and no memory of the night, only the flash of a man standing over her in a toilet cubicle. Her drink was spiked, and she was raped.
With her best friends, Terry, a struggling actor, and Kwame, who is gay, she pieces the night together from a friend's evasions and his taxi receipts, and reports it. The police investigate and, without finding the man, close the case. Around her the series finds other violations that are harder to name. A fellow writer, Zain, removes a condom during sex without telling her, and she exposes him at a literary festival. Kwame is sexually assaulted by a man he met on a hook-up app, and the officer he reports it to does not take him seriously. Terry's threesome on holiday in Italy turns out to have been set up by two men who pretended to be strangers. Theodora, a schoolfriend whose accusation of rape Arabella and Terry once helped to undermine, now runs the survivors' group Arabella joins.
Arabella turns her story into an online following, strains her friendships and is dropped by her publisher. Kwame, after a hook-up with a woman goes badly, finds something tender with a man called Tyrone; Terry lands a part and falls for Kai, a trans man. Then, at Ego Death, Arabella sees her rapist, David.
The last episode imagines the confrontation three times. In the first, she and Theo, with Terry, drug him and beat him. In the second, she lets him try again so that the police can catch him, and listens as he talks about his own fear before they take him away. In the third, she takes him home, has sex with him on her own terms and tells him to go. Then she stays in, and stops going back. Months later her book is out, and the series ends at a crowded reading as she begins.
Starring
Michaela Coelas Arabella Essiedu
A young London writer with a big online following, on deadline for her second book when her drink is spiked and she is raped.
Arabella Essiedu’s story
Arabella pieces her lost night together from her friend Simon's evasions and his taxi receipts, and reports the rape with Kwame beside her. The police find no one and close the case. When a fellow writer, Zain, removes a condom without telling her, she names him from a festival stage. She joins the survivors' group run by Theo, whose rape claim she helped to discredit at school, turns her story into an online following, pushes her friends away and loses her publisher. Learning that Terry told Simon to leave her that night, she thanks Terry for her friendship instead. When she finally sees David at Ego Death, she imagines revenge, his arrest, a night on her own terms, and then stays home and stops going back. Months later she stands before a crowded reading of her finished book.
Weruche Opiaas Terry Pratchard
Arabella's best friend since school, a struggling actor who stands by her while facing what happened to herself in Italy.
Terry Pratchard’s story
Terry is an actor who freezes at auditions and envies, a little, her best friend's success. On holiday in Italy she sleeps with two men who seem to be strangers to each other; much later she realises they planned it together. In London she pushes Arabella to face the rape and to write, while keeping from her that she told Simon to leave Arabella on the night it happened; when Arabella finds out, she thanks Terry rather than blaming her. Terry lands a part at last and, dating Kai, a trans man, has to face her own awkwardness. In each imagined confrontation with David she is at Arabella's side. Months later she is in love with Kai, her nerves turned into a performance in a television advert, and her friendship with Arabella has never been stronger.
Paapa Essieduas Kwame
Arabella's gay best friend, who is sexually assaulted after a hook-up and finds the police unwilling to listen.
Kwame’s story
Kwame goes with Arabella to the police station when she reports her rape. Soon afterwards a man he meets through Grindr, after they have had sex, refuses to let him leave and sexually assaults him. When Kwame reports it, the officer does not take him seriously. He retreats into hook-ups, then sleeps with a woman without telling her he is gay; when he tells her, she throws him out, and Arabella and Terry call it a deception. He takes her to lunch to apologise and is not forgiven. Then he meets Tyrone, who cooks for him, takes him on dates and is in no hurry to go to bed, and Kwame, his swagger gone, asks for a hug. By the end he is with Tyrone, in what looks like his first real relationship.
Why it matters
I May Destroy You is about consent in all the places where the word gets difficult. Arabella's rape is the plain case, a spiked drink and a stranger, and even that leaves her with no memory, no suspect and a closed file. Around it Michaela Coel sets the harder ones: a condom removed in secret, a yes obtained by a lie, a man assaulted after sex he had wanted minutes before, a teenager disbelieved in part because of her friends. Coel drew on her own life; in a 2018 lecture she said she had been sexually assaulted while writing her earlier series, Chewing Gum. The show won her the Emmy for writing a limited series. Its ending refuses the satisfactions of revenge and of forgiveness alike. What it asks instead is what it would mean for a survivor to become the author of her own story, rather than wait for someone to be punished.