‘I FELT OUTRAGED, SHOCKED AT MY OWN IGNORANCE’
Black Earth Rising, a new thriller centred on international war crimes, promises to be an intense watch. As Georgia Humphreys finds out from writer Hugo Blick and star Michaela Coel, it covers a period of history many people in the West are totally unawar
HOW much do you know about the prosecution of international war crimes? If the answer is “very little”, you’re not alone – it’s a topic many of us are unfamiliar with. Take actress Michaela Coel: Before reading the script for Black Earth Rising, a new BBC Two thriller which deals with the complicated legal ramifications of the Rwandan genocide, she had no idea about the history the show covers. “I felt outraged, shocked at my own ignorance,” admits the 30-year-old, known for writing and starring in E4 sitcom Chewing Gum. “When did this happen? I was asking my Mum, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?”’ “So I took a dedication to the pursuit of getting the role, because I wanted to correct my own ignorance and I wanted to somehow feel a sense of redemption from my lack of awareness,” she continues. Here, Michaela, and the drama’s creator, Bafta-winner Hugo Blick, tell us more about the explosive six-parter.
SHAPING THE STORY
Michaela plays Kate Ashby, who was adopted from Rwanda as a child during the genocide, and raised in Britain by Eve Ashby (The Crown’s Harriet Walter), a world class British prosecutor in international criminal law. Now in her 20s, Kate has followed in her mother’s footsteps and works as a legal investigator in the law chambers of Michael Ennis (played by Roseanne star John Goodman). “She’s absolutely incredible,” Michaela says of her character. “I understand that she is not real but she is my hero. Her perseverance, her resilience, her strength, her ability to defy alone is admirable.” The story takes a turn when Eve embarks on a case at the International Criminal Court, prosecuting an African militia leader, and Michael and Kate end up on a journey that will alter their lives forever. Discussing her preparation for the role, Michaela reveals she read various accounts of genocide survivors. “I found the more I read, the more tangled everything became,” she explains. “It was almost like a rabbit hole that I felt I didn’t have the IQ to master.” Welshman Hugo, whose previous successes include political spy thriller The Honourable Woman, understandably did a lot of research. “In order to feel authentic and knowledgeable about these things, it took about six months of research through Rwanda and into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a number of people whose experiences are, in some ways, shown to influence the story,” notes the 53-year-old writer. “But they’re not personifications.”
SUBJECT MATTER
After completing The Honourable Woman, about a baroness trying to forge new ties between Israelis and Palestinians, Hugo recognised he was “interested in the reconciliation of trauma”. “So I thought, ‘How does that work institutionally?’ “Looking at war crimes, that’s a pretty big traumatic event and how are we helping to reconcile people to that? And why are we doing it as a Western environment? Should we be doing it? Why are we doing it?” Issues of justice, guilt and self-determination are touched on across the episodes. Hugo calls the unfamiliarity of the story both “the strength of the show and the hill it has to climb”. “Our knowledge of modern Africa reminds you that during the genocide it was a period when OJ Simpson was arrested,” he notes. “What do we remember? We remember OJ Simpson’s arrest, the tragic death of two people, but in fact, at the same time, up to a million people were killed in Rwanda. “We talk about [how] the West sometimes expresses [this opinion] – which is horrifically dangerous – [that] ‘Down there that’s just what they do to each other, isn’t it?’ “That total lack of engagement, responsibility [and] recognition, and when we make those kind of comments [is something we] look to explore within the story.” POTENTIAL REACTION Michaela agrees that an important function of drama is to raise awareness, but asked whether she thinks it can change people’s minds, she seems less sure. “As we’ve seen, as history repeats itself again and again, minds are very mallea-
ble things and at the same time very rigid,” she suggests. “Awareness of different perspectives is what is useful here. In myself as a writer, I don’t really write to change people’s minds, I write to present, ‘Here’s some considerations.’” Hugo simply hopes that, after watching the series, people have a better understanding of “our relationship between our institutions, justice and Africa”. But he also says it’s a “two-way street”. “It doesn’t mean that we cannot be critical of African environments,” he points out. “This is a story that is built to be a compulsive thriller, and it’s asking some difficult questions.”
PERSONAL CONNECTION
Michaela’s parents were born in Ghana, where filming of Black Earth Rising took place. “It was my first time going home and it was absolutely overwhelming,” recalls the actress. “I went back again, just for Christmas – to go as the girl whose parents are from Ghana. But it was beautiful; it was a roller coaster.” Does she see similarities between her and her character? “Definitely,” she says. “When we went to Ghana, it’s [my character’s] first time going back to Rwanda, it was my first time going back to Ghana, which is horrifically weird. Scary parallels. Being brought up in the West, I was born here and her only memories begin here.” As for whether she thinks more people will investigate Rwanda’s history thanks to the show, she says: “I believe in curiosity. I believe it is something that I was denied growing up, going to a pretty bad school. “You’re taught to memorise your answers, you get your ‘A.’ And only after that have I learnt curiosity. I would love for everybody to have the desire to be curious beyond comfort.”