Fans turn out in force for Jodie’s stage debut
THERE was an outbreak of Jodiefever in the West End this week with Killing Eve star Jodie Comer, 29, making her London stage debut playing a barrister who is the victim of a sexual assault in the one-hander Prima Facie.
Adoring crowds are thronging the Harold Pinter theatre, and at Press night on Wednesday no one was cheering more loudly than her mentor, actor Stephen Graham, 48, who turned up with his family and led a standing ovation when the curtain fell.
The two have been close since they met when she was a teenager on the TV show Good Cop, and he suggested that his agent should take her on. They also worked together in the Bafta-nominated Channel 4 drama Help.
Comer warmly recalls his ‘pure kindness’, and Graham says: ‘She’s like a little sister to me. I’ve watched her career and feel extremely proud of her.’
Friends tell me that Comer, who is formidable in Prima Facie, felt scarred after being turned down for various theatrical roles in the past due to her lack of formal training. This time, she has been so ‘determined to prove everyone wrong’ that she is putting her social life on hold during the play’s run, which ends in mid-June.
‘She’s locked away like a hermit. Not going to Bafta. Not seeing a soul as it’s such a monumental role,’ I’m told. She’s also been swigging vinegar and turmeric drinks to keep her voice healthy.
The TV series which made her a star, Killing Eve, has just come to an end after four series, with many fans saying they felt let down by the denouement (which I will not spoil here). But I do hear there was a certain lack of personal chemistry between her and co-star Sandra Oh.