The structure of Misfits – a manifesto emerging from a lecture on carving out space in the creative industries – puts me in mind of A Room of One’s Own. Coel was brave enough to say so perhaps she will encourage others to follow suit. It is not enough for businesses to say they are open to outsiders if they fail to help those outsiders to thrive. There is undoubtedly a clamour for diversity that stretches from architecture to the media, but too often the efforts to bring people in are clumsy, vague and ineffective.
I would also have liked to know a bit more about what happened next was she shunned or embraced by execs in the months afterwards? Some of it is very industry-specific, for example her warning that television risks losing its edge.But her central message is astute.
The speech lacks focus, it leaps from imprisonment rates of black people to corporate capitalism and the tragedy of Grenfell Tower. There will be those who see this as yet another example of the current appetite for victimhood they will say that Coel herself is proof that opportunities do exist for those who want them. She is never better, though, than when she’s looking at the industry around her. I devoured her descriptions of life on the estate, where a neighbour would sprinkle halal penny sweets from his top-floor flat.
The text is razor-sharp and as funny as I May Destroy You, her hit television drama. Did it need to be a book in its own right? I would argue that the answer is yes.
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