Oscar-winning actor Daniel Kaluuya has well-solidified his place in the pantheon of this generation's greatest on-screen talents. In this FRONTPAGE story, we get him in conversation with another member of said pantheon, Michaela Coel. On the heels of Kaluuya's new film, ‘The Kitchen,’ the duo go deep on process, progress, and navigating Hollywood as Londoners.
Daniel Kaluuya’s eyes tell a story. In Jordan Peele’s Get Out, they’re an abyss of fear; in Steve McQueen’s Widows, they declare icy, reptilian detachment. His gaze twinkles with mischief as an unpredictable Wakandan warrior in Black Panther and softens when it lands on his lover as they go on the run in Queen & Slim. As civil rights activist Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah, Kaluuya’s stare crackles with resolve. In film, it commands a packed assembly hall. In real life, it won the actor an Oscar.
“There’s stuff I want to say, and there’s stuff I want to help people say,” Kaluuya explains, speaking to me from his home in Los Angeles. “Acting is me helping someone say something.” It makes me think of Kaluuya as a modern cowboy, galloping across the desert on horseback in Peele’s Nope, wearing a hoodie the exact orange of a prison jumpsuit. In that film, the camera cuts to a Hollywood close-up of his face, those eyes revealing themselves as weary, resourceful, and intelligent.
Born in North London to Ugandan parents, Kaluuya, 35 years old as of late February, honed his craft as a performer at the Anna Scher Theatre, an acting school specializing in improvisation that was initially designed to keep kids off the streets. But he was also a writer (including for the hit teen drama Skins at the age of 18). For most of his career, Kaluuya has been a conduit for other people’s stories. Now, he’s ready to tell some of his own.
“This is me saying something,” he says about his new film, The Kitchen. A dystopian sci-fi, it is his filmmaking debut. Set in an estate in an unforgiving future version of London, not terribly unlike the one Kaluuya himself grew up in, it stars Kane Robinson (aka the rapper Kano) as Izi, who is preparing to leave “The Kitchen.” Izi describes the estate as “a shithole,” but when he meets 12-year-old Benji (Jedaiah Bannerman), he starts to see his home, and the community he grew up in, differently. Co-written with Joe Murtagh and co-directed with Kibwe Tavares, the film has been 10 years in the making.
To talk about it, Kaluuya has summoned an old friend: Michaela Coel, a fellow writer, actor, Londoner, and “outsider” (as in, a person who enjoys going out). Over video chat, Coel reminds Kaluuya how they first met. It was “back in the day,” well before her two hit TV shows, I May Destroy You and her breakthrough, Chewing Gum. “I was just a random girl, trying,” she remembers. Kaluuya, she says, was a figure she’d heard a lot about. “Black, working class, an actor, and a writer — there’s not many people like that in London or the UK,” she adds.
The two were introduced by a mutual friend, back when Coel was still in her “embryonic stage,” as she puts it. Over coffee, Kaluuya gave her “a bunch of fucking advice.” She says she remembers the energy being “fuck that, fuck all of what they’re saying and go and get what you want.”
“For me to see this growth, to see everything you’ve done, to be there at the premiere of The Kitchen gassed out of my mind!” Coel says, beaming. “To be here interviewing you now, is an honor.”
With Coel calling from New York and Kaluuya in Los Angeles, the pair went deep on process, progress, and navigating Hollywood as a Londoner. Below is an edited excerpt of their conversation.
Daniel Kaluuya: M.C. in the flesh! Big Michaela, what an honor.
Michaela Coel: My G, my G. What you sayin’?
Kaluuya: I’m saying a lot of things. I’m saying a lot of things all the time. When this [film] is released, I will be free. Where are you, Michaela?
Coel: I’m in New York.
Kaluuya: Jesus Christ, somebody is winning at life. Haha!
Coel: It’s not even for a win — I’m here because my boyfriend lives here. I’m trying to write. Writing in Manhattan is tough.
Kaluuya: It’s crazy. I don’t know how you’re doing it. I was there the other week and it’s nuts. I had to surrender. I had all these plans, and I just felt like, you’re not gonna sleep, you’re not gonna do anything. Just surrender.
Coel: Did you end up having a good time?
Kaluuya: Yeah, but my good time’s different now. I like sleep.
Coel: What?! Daniel, don’t say that.
Kaluuya: I throw my little parties, but I love sleep and routine.
Coel: You’re outside. Daniel, you are outside.
Kaluuya: I’m a low-key outsider. I’m not a frontliner outsider. But I am of the outside cloth, yes.
Coel: I like that you curate events for the outside frontline.
Kaluuya: Let the outsiders be the outsiders.
Coel: You said after this, you’ll be free. Expand on that.
Kaluuya: There’s a person I am at the end of this process that I really want to meet. Who I was at the start of this process was someone who was very hurt, professionally and personally. Someone that had a lot to prove.
Coel: What happened?
Kaluuya: I didn’t have a great experience at the end of my writing journey on Skins. I appreciated the opportunity, but they were devaluing what I was giving, monetarily. And I wasn’t asking for anything astronomical. I walked away over £30. My friend was working at Primark at the time, and I was like, “He wouldn’t take a £30 pay cut if he was more experienced.” I wasn’t asking for a raise, I was asking for what I got. And then the experience of my second script wasn’t as smooth and as creative as the first one I wrote. I was doing acting at the same time; I was trying to do too much. Then my situation with the police was crazy. I was 20, and I was suing them around that time.
Coel: Yeah, that was crazy.
Kaluuya: I was accepting how prejudiced the industry I was in was. If something was happening to me, I used to internalize it as if it was me. I was moving closer to the idea that I wasn’t the problem. Then you have to meet how badly you’ve treated yourself.
Coel: And who do you think the person you wanna meet after all this press stuff is? Who’s that person?
Kaluuya: A finisher. It’ll be a different level of respect. Someone asked me years ago, “Daniel, would you ever want to win an Oscar?” and I said, “I would want to meet the person I am after it.” And then when it happened, I realized what it was. It’s an incredible blessing — it’s a very powerful object. However, in its literal sense, it is a group of people that like what you’ve done. The man on the street saying, “I fuck with your shit, mate” — it’s a formal version of that. And not one is better than the other to me. If someone is waiting for their kids to go to sleep to watch one of my films, that is as important as someone that is in the Hamptons voting. I think you feel the same way about your Emmy? Or maybe you don’t. How do you feel?
Coel: I love it when I’m filming something and one of my colleagues comes up to me and says something positive about my conduct or my problem-solving. That makes me feel really good. I think peer-to-peer validation is important to me. Whoever is with me for the nine months that we make this thing, if they’re like, “Michaela, you made this the most enjoyable experience of my whole life,” that is my favorite thing. I love it when in the process we found some kind of utopia. And I love making my mum proud. I don’t really do all the OBE, MBE kind of stuff, even though my mum would love it. But my mum loves going to an awards show. That is cloud nine for my mum. Every award I’ve ever received is in my mum’s council flat, sat there on the shelf.
Do you know Tasha Smith? She’s an actress, director, and acting coach. She said to me, “Everything is a gift.” If I get a nomination, it’s a gift. If I don’t win it, it’s a gift. If I win it, it’s a gift.
Kaluuya: One of my favorite sayings when bullshit happens is “Blessings, poorly packaged.” It’s like, what is the lesson this bullshit is telling me? I feel you.
Coel: What enables you to write at your best? I’m asking because I’m writing in Manhattan right now, which is a challenge. What do you need?
Kaluuya: I need somebody. I can write by myself, but the process hurts a lot. I learnt acting through improv, and I didn’t realize I was writing all these scenes for three years. I cultivated thinking while I talk. Me thinking and writing down will take eight hours to write a scene, but if I talk, it’ll take 30 minutes. I self-correct when someone’s there. That realignment would take me eight hours by myself. I think what is helping me now is to not stop and write. I always write now. If I have an idea, I’ll always write it. I love my phone notes.
Coel: That’s amazing.
Kaluuya: I do need peace and silence — I need not to have my phone on me if I’m really having to get it done. A lot of The Kitchen was written without the Internet. I had a flat that was on my mum’s road and I’d drop my phone at hers. And there was another house I used to house-sit, where I got this idea. I didn’t have the Internet, and my brain just was like, huh, no Wi-Fi.
Coel: In the beginning, I really need quiet. I need nature: forest, woods, water — whether it’s a creek or lake. I think I need to be a little bit afraid of where I am, because the fear makes me immerse myself in my laptop. I need to not be able to go anywhere. Recently, I went to the village where my dad was born. I stayed in the place where he lived, and I thought he was going to be staying with me, but he actually fucked off and I was alone. And there’s no Internet. And I really don’t know what’s beyond the house.
I purposely don’t bring a car, so I can’t drive anywhere. I’ll get a taxi and I’ll bring enough supplies, and then I’m trapped and I’m scared, so I run to safety — which is my laptop. It’s like I have to force myself into a flow state, because then I’m not thinking about where I am. Once I’m there, I can take that with me, and with enough discipline, I can do it anywhere.
Kaluuya: What started fear getting you into flow states?
Coel: The National Theatre does this gala every year to raise money for the theater. This couple were donors and they saw me do this poem. Then they saw me in Medea with the late Helen McCrory, and they asked me, “Are you writing anything?” And I said, “I’ve just got this commission for a TV show,” and that was Chewing Gum season one. So they were like, “Oh, you should go to our house in Lake Tahoe and write there.” But I didn’t realize where I was going. There was no one around. There was nothing there. It was Lake Tahoe, off season; it was cold. I’m from London, so it was the first time I’d been totally alone in the middle of nowhere. But that is what triggered my flow state.
Where you are used to talking as you think, I’m the opposite. To say something out loud is terrifying to me. I don’t ever share. I’m too scared to say what I think in case it’s shit.
Kaluuya: But before the Chewing Gum series, what got you into that flow state?
Coel: I was writing poetry.
Kaluuya: That’s writing.
Coel: I mean, you’re right. It’s like going under the bedsheets and creating a cave. I just need a cave.
Kaluuya : So you basically created the woods in your room?
Coel: Yeah, that was my simulation of the woods. This is the mind when you don’t know how to collaborate! I’m trying to learn how to collaborate.
Kaluuya: It’s good, you know.
Coel: That’s gonna be my new mode, because it’s more sustainable.
Kaluuya: It’s way more sustainable, and you get more done.
Coel: I need to do a first draft by myself before anybody comes in. I’m just a control freak.
Kaluuya: I’m a control freak, too. It’s cool. But what I’m saying is, when you let other people in, the idea grows. It is a baby, but I’m realizing that when I define myself as that child, I feel like it doesn’t develop as I want it to. Whereas if I just see it as a child, I go, “What’s best for this child?” The village is what’s best for this child. This is why it’s hard! It’s hard, especially if you started from a place of fear. I think the first draft of The Kitchen was very much, “Look how good I can write.”
Coel: Did you write the first draft alone?
Kaluuya: Yeah. The co-writer got involved because Get Out went mad. I was writing The Kitchen on my weekends. I’d just done that screenwriters’ lab a couple of weeks before I shot Get Out, so I had to keep writing while I was doing it. I would only take jobs that weren’t taking a lot of time. I did Black Panther, but my part weren’t that big. Get Out was 23 days, Widows was 11 days. But with Get Out, I promoted it for a year. I didn’t factor in the fact that it would succeed and that I would be recognized. My life was pushing back the story. I wrote the first draft in 2014, and until 2017, I was writing it by myself.
Coel: This is a decade of your life.
Kaluuya: A decade of my life.
Coel: Here’s a question: When you finished your first draft, how did you feel?
Kaluuya: I felt like I could do this until I’m dead.
Coel: Do you ever get this rush feeling?
Kaluuya: It’s more of a letting go. I don’t think you finish, I just think you run out of time. I don’t feel a rush. It’s like surrendering, for me. I’m like, “Take it.”
Coel: Do you grieve?
Kaluuya: Yeah. I grieve all creative processes. I’m committed. When you lose a commitment in whatever form, there is a passing. I always feel rich when I have a purpose. What about you, how does your state change?
Coel: I’m a very emotional writer. I type and I cry and then I finish, and I feel like I’ve taken a very intense psychedelic. I think I chase that high when I write. But then I also grieve. You said you’re rich when you have purpose, and it reminded me of your film when Izi moves to the fancy new building. It’s like he’s lost his purpose. Talk to me about that.
Kaluuya: No one talks about the emptiness of making it — if you’re doing it by yourself and if you haven’t set your intentions, how hollow it is. My thing was, how do I stay in Camden? How do I stay in my area? I bought my flat, the same flat where I grew up. But in that whole process, everyone left. Everyone I grew up with has moved on; they can’t afford it or they’ve flipped the house and gone on somewhere else.
I don’t really like films that talk about working-class areas as if they’re something rubbish, to go away from, when there’s wealth in the connection and community and togetherness there that you just can’t buy. You just can’t buy it. The people that you go to have different values. They don’t know about when some bullshit happens in a block, how you navigate that. They don’t know shit. But we assume they’re better because they have currency. I was exploring that in The Kitchen. I was single-minded, but it’s not really that fun if you’re one-up.
Denis Villeneuve, he’s a director; we did Sicario. He was taking me around Albuquerque, driving in the mountains, and he said something cold. I think he had a Prius; it was me, him, his daughter, and his daughter’s boyfriend at the time. And he was like, “Wow, this car goes slower when you guys are all in it. But the experience is better.” He was like, “I can’t go as fast as I used to, but this is a better ride.”
How does it feel for you when you actualize the goals that you have set for yourself?
Coel: I just return to that thing of feeling like I’m on a drug. I’m just high. There’s a euphoria and a pride in finishing. With I May Destroy You, it felt like I was on a drug and everybody else had some, too. Sorry to reference drugs so much, it’s just that is what it feels like. I think I’m probably still in shock about my entire career. I don’t know how to break it down or unpack it. I’ll probably have to fucking write about it or I won’t really understand it. I just love being in a flow state. It takes me out of the world we live in. That is what I chase, maybe because the world is oftentimes such a profoundly painful place.
Kaluuya: With I May Destroy You, I saw you birth a style of storytelling. Finding a way to be so specific and so global at the same time? That was a dream that I had at the beginning of the journey of The Kitchen. When I saw that you did it, it made me believe that I could. That show is executed in a way that’s fresh and rich and structurally forward-thinking. To do that after having a hit is one of the hardest things to ever do. That’s testament to your skill, your character, and your gifts, because everything’s a gift. [Laughs] I feel like I’ve never said to you just how inspired I was. It changed what I did. I just want to say, yo, that’s fucking real shit.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
‘The Kitchen’ is streaming on Netflix in the US starting January 19.
Simran Hans is a writer and film critic based in London.
