Michaela Coel Says She Joined Black Panther : Wakanda Forever After Learning Her Character Was Queer

Theo Wargo/Getty Images Michaela Coel

Michaela Coel is on a mission in her first Marvel Cinematic Universe role.

The Emmy-winning British actress, known for her hit series I May Destroy You, will make her MCU debut in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which hits theaters next month. And in the cover story for Vogue's November 2022 issue, Coel revealed that she signed up to join director Ryan Coogler's next installment in the franchise after learning that she's be playing a queer role.

"That sold me on the role, the fact that my character's queer," Coel told the magazine in the piece, which dropped on Thursday. "I thought, 'I like that, I want to show that to Ghana.' "

Coel, 35, plays Aneka in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — a Dora Milaje captain and combat instructor who, in the comic books, falls in love with Ayo, one of her fellow all-female warriors.

Florence Kasumba portrays Ayo in the film. Though how their character's story will play out on the big screen is being kept hush hush, in the comics, Dora Milaje members are forbidden for dating and their affair creates discord amongst the team.

In her interview with Vogue, Coel said she views playing a queer character in a franchise as popular as Black Panther as an opportunity to help address antigay policies in Ghana, where her parents were born.

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People say, 'Oh, it's fine, it's just politics,' " Coel noted, in reference to what the magazine described as Ghana's parliament introducing "some of the most oppressive anti-LGBTQ+ legislation" in the entirety of the African continent. "But I don't think it is just politics when it affects how people get to live their daily lives."

Members of Ghana's parliament in recent months introduced a bill that could make identifying as gay or as an LGBTQ+ ally punishable with up to five years in prison, according to Vogue and The Guardian.

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"That's why it felt important for me to step in and do that role because I know just by my being Ghanaian, Ghanaians will come," Coel said.

Coogler, 36 — who recently said he contemplated quitting the movie business after the death of Chadwick Boseman — told Vogue that Coel proved a fit to portray Aneka in Wakanda Forever because she's "kind of a rebel."

"It made a lot of meta sense with Michaela being someone who is pushing the industry forward and carving out her own space," he told the outlet.

Malick Bodian/Vogue

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Coel's casting in the MCU film marks something of a full-circle moment for the actress. She told Vogue she had auditioned for the first Black Panther movie while she was still studying acting in London.

According to the outlet, Coogler already "had his eye on" potentially casting Coel in a future film by the time she attended Black Panther's London premiere in 2018.

"I think for a lot of people it was the first time we'd seen some sort of representation on a very mainstream platform about the magic of Africa, the magic of the people, our ancestors," Coel said about the first Black Panther film. "Coming here, you do feel something magical."

The film was just as important for the people of Africa. In the piece, Coel and the feature's writer dined in Ghana at a restaurant fittingly called Wakanda.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever hits theaters Nov. 11