Jodie Comer to make West End debut in onewoman drama about sexual assault
Jodie Comer is to make her West End stage debut in a one-person play about a criminal barrister who defends men accused of rape.
Comer, who starred in the television dramas Killing Eve and Help, will play Tessa in the UK premiere of Prima Facie by Suzie Miller at the Harold Pinter theatre in London in a nine-week season beginning on 15 April 2022.
The play centres on a brilliant young barrister with working-class origins who specialises in sex crimes. When she is sexually assaulted, she finds herself facing the same hurdles – such as not being believed – as the victims of her clients. Miller, who worked as a lawyer before becoming a playwright, has said the work is about issues of consent and how the law is used against women who are victims of sex crimes.
Comer, 28, is currently filming the fourth and final series of Killing Eve, in which she plays the darkly comic assassin Villanelle. She said she was honoured by the chance to play Tessa in “this wonderfully unique play”. The actor recently played a care home worker in Help, a Channel 4 drama set in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Next year she will appear as Josephine Bonaparte in Ridley Scott’s
Kitbag, a biopic of Napoleon starring Joaquin Phoenix.
Prima Facie will be directed by Justin Martin, who is currently working on a film adaptation of his production of The Jungle, an acclaimed play about refugees living in the migrant camp in Calais. It was described by the Guardian as extraordinary, vivid, devastating and uplifting.
Martin most recently co-directed Together with Stephen Daldry, a television drama starring Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy as a couple whose relationship is tested by being trapped together in lockdown.
Every production of Prima Facie will have some “pay what you can” tickets available, in a “commitment to making sure accessibility is at the heart of this production”, said James Bierman, the play’s producer. He described Comer as “one of the most brilliant actors working today”.