That Jodie Comer should have received a nomination for her work in the solo show “Prima Facie,” a role that already won her Olivier and Evening Standard Theater awards, should have come as a surprise to no one. Except apparently Comer.
“I’m in shock,” she said from the back of a taxi late Tuesday morning.
In “Prima Facie,” which also earned nominations in three design categories, Comer plays Tessa, an ambitious young barrister who finds herself transformed after a colleague rapes her. With compassion, bold physicality and raw, febrile emotion, Comer enacts that assault and its aftermath eight times a week, standing in the stage rain (which the backstage crew has usually, though not always, warmed up) as Tessa struggles to gain a new perspective on her life and the law.
Comer said she hopes that the play continues to generate discussions around sexual assault and hopes that her nomination is in service of the many women she endeavors to represent. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How do you feel?
We’ve been on such a journey with this play. I never dreamed that this would be a point that we would be at. So it just feels incredible. The response has been beautiful, and I just feel very, very grateful that so many on the team have been recognized as well. I can’t stress enough how much of a team effort this piece truly is.
On the night I saw the play, as it ended, I could hear several women weeping. Has the response here been any different than it was in London?
The only difference, I would say, has been to the humor. People find humor in different moments. But given the subject matter, which is so universal, the response has been very, very similar to the U.K. We’ve had a lot of people sending letters to us backstage, explaining their experiences watching the play and how it affected them. And we’ve had people reach out who came to see the play in London, and have also come to Broadway, expressing and confiding how their lives have changed within the past year. It feels like we can have the same conversation here.
The nomination is clearly a testament to a truly astonishing Broadway debut. But given what the play concerns, do you feel that the nomination honors something more?
I hope so. It has to. I have so many people to be thankful for and so many people that I am representing. This nomination has to mean more than just me.
What’s the pleasure of playing Tessa, even knowing that this terrible thing happens to her?
What I love about performing this play every night is the journey that she goes on. The evolution of this woman, even through this really difficult time, her sense of self and strength and resilience, I really do love. She comes out of this experience definitely changed in some way, but by no means defeated. Tessa still inspires hope. We get a lot of messages like that, like, “I felt completely crushed, but also invigorated.”
Source: Theater - nytimes.com
