Erivo's 'Prima Facie' Earns Standing Ovation at TIFF Premiere — SkimNews
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- "Prima Facie" held its world premiere Sunday at Roy Thompson Hall during the Toronto International Film Festival, where the audience rewarded Erivo and her filmmakers with a standing ovation for the harrowing drama.
- Erivo stars as Tessa, a rising London barrister who defends sexual assault defendants before being raped by a colleague, forcing her to confront the patriarchal legal system she once leveraged to win cases.
- Director Susanna White ("Bleak House," "Jane Eyre," "Woman Walks Ahead") helmed the film adaptation of playwright Suzie Miller's globally acclaimed one-woman show, with supporting cast including Daniel Ings, Elizabeth Dulau and Simon Russell Beale.
- Jodie Comer won the Tony and Olivier awards originating the role on stage; Erivo already holds two Oscar nominations (for Harriet Tubman and Elphaba in "Wicked") and a Tony for "The Color Purple."
- Erivo told a post-premiere Q&A that she met with Black women barristers to study how they work "in a different rhythm," shaping her portrayal of Tessa as a working-class woman of color navigating a legal system rooted in medieval-era London courts.
- The film is described as one of the hottest sales titles on the block at this year's TIFF.
Why it matters: Erivo's casting brings an explicit racial and socioeconomic dimension to a role that Jodie Comer originated as a white character — a shift that, alongside the film's status as one of TIFF's hottest sales titles, gives distributors a commercially distinct property built on a Tony- and Olivier-winning play.
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