Jodie Comer has paid tribute to the “sisterhood” of theatre workers behind the scenes on her West End debut.
Comer won the best actress prize at the Olivier awards on Sunday night for her performance in Suzie Miller’s play Prima Facie. After collecting her award, she praised the stage management team, saying: “I just felt so held, every night … The women were backstage the whole time, doing their work, holding me up, making sure everyone felt safe and happy, making sure we were having fun, really truly caring about what it was that we were doing.”
The Killing Eve star said that they are all still connected through a WhatsApp group: “We call it the sisterhood because we just felt so close to each other.”
Prima Facie, which ran at the Harold Pinter theatre in London last year, stars Comer as a barrister who defends men of rape and is assaulted herself. It led Comer to reappraise the legal system for sexual assault cases. “I’d never really questioned it before and I was actually quite embarrassed about that,” she said, explaining that the play explores the notion of reaching “a legal truth” in court. “There is no real truth, only legal truth – I struggled to wrap my head around [that]. And the fact that the accused has the right to remain silent – it’s actually the victim who stands on trial and not the accused perpetrator. Those were things that I was really surprised by.”
Researching the play, the Prima Facie team sat in on real trials. Accepting the Olivier award for best new play, Miller thanked “the barristers and the judges of the Old Bailey who really supported us”. Police officers, too, had been “very transparent with us”, added Comer, who remarked that those involved in sexual assault trials had spoken about what their job demands of them “and sometimes how they have to put aside their own feelings, as women, to commit to the job that they do”.
Comer said that, at the first West End preview, she could hear gasps from women in the audience and was aware that Prima Facie had “started a conversation” and that if theatre or television can do that then it is “second to none”. The play is a monologue but, in her acceptance speech, she stressed that “it takes so many people to make the show what it is”. Among those she thanked was the show’s composer Rebecca Lucy Taylor (Self Esteem). Next month, Comer begins a 10-week run of the play on Broadway.
