Playwright Suzie Miller on her hit show Prima Facie: 'What Jodie Comer's done with the role is amazing'
Suzie Miller’s play about an ambitious young woman defence barrister who becomes a victim of sexual violence comes to Edinburgh next week, with Jodie Comer in the lead role. Initially Miller didn’t think Comer was right for the part, but when she watched her begin to deliver her lines “there was just something magical in the room”, she tells Joyce McMillan
Suzie Miller can remember the exact moment when she realised that a career in science was not for her. The year was 1986, and Miller - who had been the first member of her Irish-Australian working-class family ever to graduate from university, in her home town of Melbourne - was working as a scientist, when news came through of the huge Chernobyl nuclear power station disaster in the then Soviet Union.
She remembers that all her colleagues lifted their eyes briefly from the microscope slides they were studying, to discuss the chemistry of the explosion; and then returned to work. Miller, though, had many more questions; notably about who was responsible for such a catastrophe, and whether they would ever be held to account.
So within months, she found herself giving up the job, moving to Sydney to study law, and setting herself on the path that would eventually lead to her current global fame as an award-winning playwright, notably of plays about women in the legal system. Her 2025 play Inter Alia - starring Rosamund Pike as a woman judge - won huge acclaim at the National Theatre in London. And her huge 2022 London hit Prima Facie - a solo drama about an ambitious young woman defence barrister who herself becomes a victim of sexual violence, performed in explosive style by Jodie Comer of Killing Eve fame - is now on tour; its only Scottish dates, at Edinburgh’s Lyceum Theatre next week, sold out within minutes of being put on sale.
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“I really enjoyed my work as a defence lawyer,” says Miller; “the human stories, the court appearances, the lot. As part of my job, though, I was also often taking statements from female victims of crime. I began to understand that there were aspects of the system that just weren’t working, particularly for women; and I wanted to write about those issues in ways that would really provoke public debate about them.
“When you’re arguing a case in court, you’re really only addressing a judge, or a judge and jury; whereas in theatre you can explore the issues that really interest you, and do it in front of an audience of hundreds - or even thousands, if your play is a success.”
Miller began her playwriting career in 2004, with a hugely successful play called Cross Sections, based on stories from the Kings Cross district of Sydney. Then for half a decade, with two young children, she juggled family, legal work and her writing; until in 2009 she was offered a playwright residency at the National Theatre in London, and almost without hesitation, chose the playwriting path.
“Yes, it meant that I had to move the whole family to London,” says Miller, whose husband is now an Australian High Court judge. “But we’ve always just taken it in turns to be thousands of miles away from most of our work. Back then, it was him; now it’s me, based in Sydney, but constantly having to fly to London or New York or wherever.”
Miller’s travelling lifestyle is more than worth it, though, when it involves experiences like re-staging Prima Facie - first seen in Sydney in 2019 - for its 2022 UK production.
“When they first suggested Jodie Comer to me, I said, “oh no, not her!” I don’t know why, really; but they persuaded me to give it a go, and when I saw her beginning to speak those lines - well, there was just something magical in that room, and in that production. Jodie worked so hard on it - and what she created is just amazing.
“So I’m very much looking forward to seeing the show in Edinburgh, where I’ve had good times putting on Fringe shows in the past; and then it’s back to work on the next thing. It’s a new play called Strong Is The New Pretty, about the struggle to found the Australian women’s football league; and it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out in Australia, later this year.”
Prima Facie is at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, from 3-7 February
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