One of the world’s leading drama schools has apologized to I May Destroy You creator Michaela Coel and star Paapa Essiedu for “appalling and unacceptable racist comments” 10 years ago.
Essiedu told The Guardian he experienced a “real ‘time stops moment’” when a teacher at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama taking part in an improvization shouted “‘Hey you, N-word, what have you got behind you?’” The pair were acting a scene in which a prison officer looks for drugs among prisoners.
Essiedu said the incident was so horrifying that neither he nor Coel, who was in his class, knew how to respond.
The same teacher told Essiedu he did not enunciate clearly and spoke as if his mouth was “full of chocolate cake,” according to the Gangs of London star.
Coel made reference to the incident during her blistering 2018 August MacTaggart address, during which she revealed she had been sexually assaulted during the making of her breakout Chewing Gum.
A spokesman for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, which is ranked as one of the top 10 performing arts institutions in the world, said the school “apologies unreservedly for the racism experienced by Paapa Essiedu, Michaela Coel and other alumni whilst they were studying at the school. The experiences he shares were appalling and unacceptable.”
The school has “since undertaken a sustained programme of action to address and dismantle longstanding systemic racism within the acting programme, including commissioning an external report into historic racism and a comprehensive and ongoing process of staff training and reflection,” according to the spokesman.
Since graduating from the Guildhall, Essiedu has played the first Royal Shakespeare Company’s Black Hamlet, while featuring in the likes of Sky/AMC’s Gangs of London, Alex Garland pic Men and upcoming Sky series The Lazarus Project. He was nominated for a BAFTA for his performance in Coel’s BBC/HBO drama I May Destroy You.
That show, which Coel created and starred in, was one of the most critically-acclaimed series of 2020, sweeping up during awards season, and she is currently in the process of writing another BBC drama.