Cynthia Erivo’s Prima Facie Puts a Barrister’s Career on Trial
Cynthia Erivo stars as Tessa Ensler, a barrister whose work defending men accused of rape is upended by her own experience. The film adapts Suzie Miller’s stage hit, shifting its story from a solo theatrical performance to a conventional drama while centering Erivo’s commanding portrayal.
Cynthia Erivo stars as barrister Tessa Ensler in Prima Facie, a film about a sexual assault trial that forces its protagonist to reassess her work defending men accused of rape. The prima facie review cynthia story adapts Suzie Miller’s international stage hit for the screen.
Erivo commands the film. Tessa is a skilled courtroom advocate who has fought racism and classism to build her career, and takes pleasure in the force of cross-examination and the spectacle of law.
That confidence has a cost. Tessa has built a name defending men in rape cases, while aggressively challenging women who bring complaints against them. The film turns on what happens when her professional certainty collides with her own experience.
From solo play to screen drama
Miller wrote the screenplay, and Susanna White directed the adaptation. The stage production places one performer at the center of a sustained stream of thought; the film opens the story into a more conventional drama.
The shift gives the story a different shape. Tessa’s inner life is less immediate than it is onstage, but the film’s narrative remains strongly constructed and driven by its performances.
Erivo plays Tessa opposite Daniel Ings as Julian Brooks, her head of chambers. Their relationship initially appears to be going well. After an event following dinner, Tessa begins to question the career she has built.
Tessa’s experience changes the case
The film follows her decision to report rape and the process of speaking with two police officers. In one quiet detail, the camera lingers on a coffee-mug-shaped stain on a wooden desk as Tessa talks.
That ordinary mark gives the scene a close, unsettled focus. The story stays with Tessa’s experience of reporting, then follows years of her life as she continues to earn a living.
The courtroom sequence brings the film back to the legal world that once defined Tessa’s success. Its realism does not recreate the force of the play’s final speech, while Erivo sustains the character’s moral authority through the ending.
Noma Dumezweni plays Tessa’s mother, whose presence adds another dimension to the story. The film is an adaptation of Miller’s play, which starred Sheridan Harbridge in its original Australian production and Jodie Comer in London’s West End.
