Cynthia Erivo stars in Prima facie as Tessa Ensler in Susanna White’s film version of Suzie Miller’s play, which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in Gala Presentations. The adaptation arrives with the weight of a role that Jodie Comer took from West End and Broadway and turned into an awards vehicle.
Prima Facie won the 2023 Olivier for Best New Play, while Comer collected the Best Actress Olivier and a Tony for the stage production. Suzie Miller wrote the screenplay for the 1 hour 46 minutes film, so the material shifts from a solo stage piece into a screen version that can widen the legal and emotional world without losing the central argument.
Susanna White and the screenplay
The film opens with Tessa bouncing up the steps of the Old Bailey courthouse, then follows a rising star among British barristers who works on assault cases before she is assaulted by a colleague she was dating. Daniel Ings plays Julian, another rising-star lawyer, and the setup keeps the focus on professional power as much as personal harm. Miller’s screenplay expands on her one-woman stage version, which gives the film more room than the theater piece had for office dynamics, institutional pressure, and the slow turn from confidence to exposure.
That expansion also changes the rhythm. The stage version can live on direct address and compression; the film uses recurring voiceover taken directly from the play, including “Thoroughbreds, that’s how I see them.”, “But I’m here too.”, and “I want this,” to preserve Tessa’s internal logic while moving her through rooms, corridors, and the courthouse. The result is a screen adaptation that has to do two jobs at once: carry the authority of the original text and justify its move into a visual, 1 hour 46 minutes format.
Tessa Ensler on screen
Cynthia Erivo taking over Tessa Ensler from Jodie Comer gives the film its clearest industry hook. Comer owned the role on West End and Broadway; Erivo now carries it into a festival setting where the benchmark is not applause alone but whether the material still lands once it leaves the stage and becomes a film. That is a hard transfer, and it usually exposes whether a play has enough cinematic structure to survive the switch.
The problem is that Prima Facie is described as carrying an important lesson about justice for rape victims while also landing as a near-total muddle. That split matters because the film is trying to preserve a public-issue argument and a character study at the same time, and the screen version’s added movement, voiceover, and expanded screenplay do not fully solve the mismatch between its legal urgency and its form. Erivo’s presence gives the project authority; the adaptation still has to earn coherence on screen.
Gala Presentations and after
The Toronto International Film Festival slot gives Prima Facie a showcase, not a finish line. For viewers, the practical takeaway is simple: this is the film version to watch if you want to see how Suzie Miller, Susanna White, and Cynthia Erivo have reframed a play that won the 2023 Olivier for Best New Play and sent Jodie Comer to the top of the stage awards track.
What comes next for the audience is less about a new sales pitch than about interpretation. The film asks whether the expanded screenplay and recurring voiceover are enough to carry a story that already worked once in a much stricter form, and Erivo’s performance is the test case for that answer.
