Lesbians Line Up for
Back-to-Back Dramas
Starring Sapphic Icons

A growing crowd of women gathered hopefully in front of
the Playhouse Theatre in Liverpool earlier this spring. The
goal for many was to see, firsthand, British actor Jodie
Comer, who solidified her queer icon status by playing
Villanelle in the BBC’s sapphic thriller series Killing Eve.

Reprising her role as Tessa Ensler in the award-winning
play Prima Facie from Australian playwright Suzie Miller,
Comer had thrilled the fandom with another run of the
popular production that first debuted on the West End in
2022 to great acclaim.

“Definitely in London, everyone used to say it’s just a
thousand lesbians outside,” said Mandy Richardson, who
runs the Instagram page Prima Facie Players, which
shares news and content about the play and Comer.

After the play’s Olivier-winning run on the West End and a
decorated stint on Broadway in 2023, playwright Miller
had become just as much of a household name to fans as
Comer herself.

First Sight for Fans

In the play, Prima Facie—a legal phrase that means ‘at
first sight’ or ‘on the face of it’—Miller’s writing touched
both hearts and minds with the deeply moving production
that follows Ensler, a hotshot defense lawyer making a
name for herself by representing men accused of sexual
assault.

Her world is turned upside down when she herself
becomes a victim and is forced to face the flawed legal
system from a different perspective. The result is a
harrowing tale, performed impeccably by the stunning
Comer, who takes the versatility and style that made her
depiction of Villanelle so captivating, and channels it into
a powerhouse live performance.

While Comer’s electric portrayal of Ensler piqued the
curiosity of Comer fans, it is playwright Miller’s words that
stayed with viewers long after leaving the theatre.

Three Legal Dramas Lesbians Love

We had the opportunity to connect with Miller this
summer during a rare moment of downtime between a
triumphant final week of Prima Facie in Liverpool, preview
week of her next show, Inter Alia on the West End
(starring Best Actress Olivier winner Rosamund Pike), and
post-production on the film version of Prima Facie,
starring the Grammy Award-winning Oscar nominee Cynthia
Erivo.

The film of Prima Facie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and drew a thunderous standing ovation, confirming that Miller’s poignant storytelling crosses mediums. The prolific playwright spent the earlier part of her career as a defense lawyer in her native Australia. After years immersed in the legal world, Miller saw the deeply flawed way that cases involving marginalized people, especially women and sexual assault survivors, were handled.

“The law is built by men, for men,” she realized—which is a
recurring theme in both Prima Facie and Inter Alia.

“I didn’t believe the system worked,” Miller said from her
office in Sydney. “I had all these men telling me that if you
can’t do a good job for your client in a sexual assault case,
then you’re not impartial enough. Which is true. So I said, I
won’t do those cases because obviously I won’t do a good
enough job because I don’t believe the system’s working
in a way that I could trust.”

Prima Facie tackles the epidemic of sexual assault and
how Ensler is forced to reckon with a legal system that is
not built to support victims.

While the play was an intense one-woman monologue,
the film brings Ensler’s world to life with a cast of
characters and settings, and also features a different ending
than the play.

“I wanted to have a point of difference from the play, which focuses heavily on gender and class, and I thought if we added race to the mix, that is a whole other perspective,” Miller said. “In terms of history and being a Black woman at the bar, there are a lot of different issues I thought were important to explore. I worked really closely with Cynthia in bringing her version of Tessa to life.”

Miller wanted to create something new for audiences to
relate to with the film that speaks not only to the gender
inequality in legal spaces but to racial inequality.

“She [Erivo] would say, ‘I walk into that room [the court],
and something shifts; it’s not somewhere I can blend in,’”
said Miller, describing Erivo’s approach to her role of
Ensler in the film.

Coming from a legal background that provided rich experiences for the storytelling Miller now brings to stage and screen was not without risk.

“When I first wrote Prima Facie, I thought I would be
ostracized from the legal profession for speaking out,” she
said. “For having worked in that system for years and
years, to speak out against it, I thought would make me a
pariah, but the opposite has happened. I’ve had people
come to me and say that they have spent so many years
working in that system that they hadn’t stopped to think
about it and how it has changed how they look at their
job, which has been really heartening for me.”

Among Other Things

After two successful runs in London starring Pike (loved
by lesbians for her sapphic turns as Moiraine Damodred in
the Amazon Prime series The Wheel of Time and as sexy
scammer Marla Grayson in the film I Care a Lot), Inter Alia
(legalese for ‘among other things’) is coming to Broadway,
starting November 10 and running through February 21,
2027.

Pike’s portrayal of London Crown Court Judge Jessica Parks is an electric balancing act, as she navigates a demanding work life with an ego-laden husband uncomfortable with her professional success, and a teenage son who, she finds, is being influenced by the toxic online manosphere.

When the unthinkable happens, she finds herself torn
between her love of family, her duty to the law, and her inner
knowing of what is right.

“They’re in conversation with each other, obviously,” Miller
said of how the two plays approach the same topic from
different perspectives.

“I wanted Inter Alia to show how much women are expected to cater to men, in this case her husband, because she is more successful than he is. Generally, Inter Alia shows how much more emotional caring and labor women are expected to do,” she added.

Inter Alia is a fast-paced play that showcases Pike’s range
as an actor, taking her from powerful judge to loving
mother, doting wife, and attentive friend within moments.
Any woman who frequently finds herself torn between all
of the roles she plays, regardless of sexuality, can identify
with Parks on some level.

Just as Prima Facie created a conduit for audiences to
process difficult things, often for the first time, Inter Alia
calls out behavior that has become far too normalized.

Voices of a Growing Sisterhood

While Prima Facie is a primal scream, Inter Alia is a
rallying cry.

“Women have come out in force to both shows,” said
Miller. “The crew involved in the play Prima Facie all have
matching necklaces that are a nod to the sisterhood they
felt with the play. The phrase ‘a sister, a friend’ is
something they will always be to each other. Jodie has the
same necklace, and they all wear it together, so whenever
they have a hard time they remember that mentality,
which is lovely.”

The sisterhood Miller speaks of isn’t limited to those
involved in producing the plays or the film. Among the
many fans who gathered in Liverpool to experience the
last week of Comer’s performances was Richardson,
creator of the Prima Facie Players.

In addition to her work leading that community, she was
asked to write a piece for the Prima Facie playbill, sharing
what the play and the sisterhood meant to her.

Like many, she was initially drawn to Prima Facie as a fan
of Comer and went to see an earlier West End
performance, not knowing what to expect.

“I didn’t really have any preconceptions of what the play
was about,” said Richardson when we met at a coffee
shop near the Playhouse Theatre. “I didn’t realize what it
was going to do to me personally on an emotional level. I
saw it four times in that initial run, and that was the
beginning of my healing journey.”

Starting the Instagram community has allowed
Richardson to function as a de facto fan club president and a
central hub for all things “Prima Facie” and Suzie Miller.

As we walked around the theatre, groups of women were
waiting their turn to sign Richardson’s “Fancy F*cking Pink
Flag,” a nod to the “fancy f*cking pink shirt” Ensler
receives from her mother in the play—a connection to her
home and her emotional center as she navigates the
biased intricacies of the law while reporting her sexual
assault.

The flag, signed by dozens of women thanking Comer for
portraying a character far too relatable, was presented to
the actor at the stage door on the penultimate night of
the tour. A delighted Comer expressed gratitude and
joked that Richardson was essentially part of the crew
now.

“They do bond to me a little bit and open up,” Richardson
said of the women who message her online or approach
her at the theatres, sharing their own stories of assault
and healing. “I can’t help but feel like I’ve done something
good. This play gave me back my self. I didn’t walk
through life thinking I was damaged, but 40 years after
the event, I realized I’d never faced it. I just buried it. And
now I’m meeting women who are burying it, and this story
has allowed us to say, ‘Don’t do that, it’s not your fault.’ I
think that’s the hardest part: knowing that it’s not your
fault. And that’s what I try to do, just lift them up.”

Inspiring Change for Good

It’s that sisterhood that means so much to Miller, and
whether it’s on stage or on screen, her work takes an
incredibly difficult topic that impacts almost 1 in 2 women
in the United States and 1 in 3 women in the United
Kingdom—regardless of sexuality—and provides a way to
process and, hopefully, start to heal.

“In the UK, a judge changed the law after seeing the
show,” Miller said with a sense of awe. “That was a really
profound moment for me because, as a lawyer, to think
that I could do something that, ironically, a judge would
see and be affected by is amazing. She told me she
stayed up all night rewriting the directions to juries trying
sexual assault and rape cases using language from the
play. That is incredible.”

Miller can rest easy because her work is actively
improving the world for women.

Of course, when it comes to supporting the art driving
positive change, lesbians are often the first in line.

Tickets to Inter Alia on Broadway, starring Rosamund Pike,
are here. Learn more about the Prima Facie film, starring
Cynthia Erivo, here.