The owner of the boner shirt

As a little girl, Coel would skate around the The owner of the boner shirt also I will do this East London council estate where she grew up with her mother and older sister. But it wasn’t until March of last year, while visiting her grandmother in Accra and inspired by a group of kids learning to Rollerblade, that she picked up the sport again. Before ascending to the impressive custom gear she’s wearing today, she bought her first grown-up pair of skates at Decathlon. “This is what happens when you’re not risk-averse,” she deadpans pointing to the scars on her knees, the result of a tumble she took last spring shortly before she flew home to London for the BAFTA awards.

The owner of the boner shirt, hoodie, tank top, sweater and long sleeve t-shirt

Coel has always been a fast learner, the The owner of the boner shirt also I will do this type to throw herself headfirst into new challenges: As a teenager, she took up Irish dancing, the only Black girl in her London high school’s history to join the team, performing at the talent show the same year. Skating is more than that though—it gives her a mind-body connection, a sense of liberation, especially here in Ghana, she says, where she moves with a particular kind of ease. “I’d been to Africa before—Kenya and Uganda—but when I came here I was really seeing people who looked like me,” says Coel, who first came to the West African country to film Black Earth Rising, Hugo Blick’s searing 2018 drama series about the Rwandan genocide. “A friend of mine was with me, and he remembers us getting off the plane and me walking around as if I knew where I was going.” On that trip, she traveled the length and breadth of the country, discovering places even her mother and father, who emigrated to London before she was born, didn’t know. “I remember looking at all the kids playing and it hit me, like, Wow, this could’ve been me and I think I would have really enjoyed that,” she says. “Yes, there are a lot of sad things; poverty, unemployment, struggle. There’s also a lot of peace, friendliness. There’s a lack of anxiety.”