Latest news with #PrimaFacie
Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
How do you follow Prima Facie? With a play about boys, porn and parents
H ow do you follow a play like Prima Facie? Suzie Miller's blistering monologue (she prefers the word 'monodrama') about a promising young barrister who brings a rape case against a colleague was arguably the most electrifying theatrical event of the past five years. Its star, Jodie Comer, won an Olivier for a performance that went from funny to destroyed to defiant and back again, prompting a national conversation about the justice system. Not just national: the play went to Broadway and has now been performed in 36 countries and 30 languages. In September the Wicked star Cynthia Erivo will start filming a screen version. Given all this, is Miller suffering second-act nerves? 'Yeah,' she says, sounding not in the least nervous. (Now 61, the former lawyer has written dozens of plays, including two recently staged in Sydney.) Instead this warm, voluble Australian can't wait to rattle cages again. 'After Prima, the next question was — well, it's not women's problem that this is happening. There is a problem with how we define masculinity.'
NZ Herald
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
What to do in Auckland this weekend: Matariki, midwinter magic and must-see shows
Rachel Jenkins describes her music as a continuous emotional journey. 2) Prima Facie The most talked-about play of the last couple of years is undoubtedly Prima Facie, and NZ Theatre Company opens the show for a return season tomorrow at The Pumphouse. A challenging piece that deals with sexual assault and the legal system, Cassandra Woodhouse is phenomenal as criminal defence lawyer Tessa Ensler. Directed by Michael Hurst, this short season of Prima Facie is paired with Hurst's one-man show The Golden Ass, a modern take on Apuleius' 1st-century novel. Audiences are invited to do the double whammy and see both shows on June 15, 20 or 21. The Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday performances of Prima Facie are followed by a Q&A hosted by Ali Mau. When: Tomorrow until June 21 Where: The Pumphouse Theatre, Killarney Park, Takapuna. Tickets start at $20 + booking fees from Cassandra Woodhouse in Prima Facie. Some nights feature post-show Q&As with journalist Ali Mau. 3) Raranga for Matariki Festival Auckland Council, with iwi partner Ngāti Tamaoho, continues the Matariki Festival celebrations this weekend with multiple events across the city, including a raranga (weaving) exhibition at Depot Artspace. Ruaruawhetū - Weaving Design Celebrating the Stars features woven artworks by 17 artists that represent the stars of Matariki. There's an opening event and artist talk this afternoon, and three raranga workshops in July. Also today, there's a Matariki Whānau Day at Onehunga Community Centre and the Ngāti Tamaoho opening event at Sir Edmund Hillary Library and Papakura Museum, plus the annual Tūrama and Taurima light displays in the city. When: June 1 - July 26 (Opening today, 2pm-4pm) Where: Depot Artspace, 28 Clarence St, Devonport. Free. See for more information on all other Matariki Festival events. There's no shortage of ways to celebrate Matariki this weekend, with everything from weaving to theatre on show. Photo / Grant Apiata 4) Midwinter Lights Festival Possibly the most charming light show in town, tonight is Howick Historical Village's Midwinter Lights Festival. The old settlers' village is decorated with twinkling lights, and visitors are invited to wander through the illuminated historic buildings and gardens. There will be roving performers in glowing costumes, live music by soul jazz band Big Tasty, mulled wine and hot spiced apple juice for sale, along with local food vendors. Plus, the old-fashioned sweet shop will be open. Rug up and head along for a quaint and festive step back in time. When: Tonight, 5pm-9pm Where: Howick Historical Village, 75 Bells Rd, Pakuranga. Tickets $20 adult, $10 child from (limited door sales). This midwinter, Auckland brings together creativity, celebration and culture in a calendar full of local gems. 5) Mid-Winter Dip For the wild and the brave, tomorrow is the annual Mid-Winter Dip in Devonport. The temperature has dropped just in time to ensure this year's event is not for the faint-hearted. Attendees are invited to come in costume for a little added fun or just wear your togs - a wetsuit would surely be cheating. Free soup and Milo are provided for those who take the plunge, and the 1st Devonport Venturer Scouts will be running a sausage sizzle. There's always a great atmosphere and buckets of community spirit at the Mid-Winter Dip. As French philosopher Albert Camus famously said: 'In the depth of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.' When: Tomorrow, 11am Where: Windsor Reserve, Devonport. Free, register online at 6) NZ Careers Expo Given the current climate, this event may draw the biggest crowd of them all next week. The NZ Careers Expo is in Auckland on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Auckland Showgrounds. It's targeted at school leavers and jobseekers of all kinds, and features a range of employers, tertiary providers, industry organisations and government agencies. They're all there to provide information about the options available for those looking to build a stable career for the future. Whether you're seeking inspiration or know what you want to do but need help figuring out how to get there, chances are the NZ Careers Expo can help, and it's free. When: June 17, 10am-3pm and 5pm-7pm, June 18, 10am-2pm Where: Auckland Showgrounds, 217 Green Lane West, Epsom, Auckland. Free, visit for more info. The NZ Careers Expo offers free entry and practical career guidance for jobseekers. 7) Plan Ahead: End of Summer Time ATC opens a new play by legendary New Zealand playwright Roger Hall next week. End of Summer Time sees the return of one of Hall's much-loved characters Dickie Hart, this time catching up with the retired cow cocky after he and his wife move to Tāmaki Makaurau. Andrew Grainger plays the lovable curmudgeon who, despite all his complaints, might just find something to love about the big smoke after all. There are two preview shows on Tuesday and Wednesday before the official opening night on Thursday. It's a solo show to which Grainger brings plenty of laughs, particularly for those who've experienced a big life transition in which they may or may not have been a willing participant. When: June 17-July 5 Where: ASB Waterfront Theatre, 138 Halsey St, Auckland Central. Tickets start at $22, from ATC's End of Summer Time revives a fan-favourite Roger Hall character. Photo / Signy Björg 8) Plan Ahead: Hau [Te Hī Me Te Hā] It's not exactly a Matariki or Pride event, but Hau Festival at Basement Theatre happily coincides with the Māori New Year and international Pride Month. The two-week festival of new works by indigenous and LGBTQIA+ storytellers features five events: Tāne Rore, a song, dance, haka, monologue and poetry performance that's the 'brother-show' of 2022 hit Hine-te-Rēhia; a free Garage Party on Matariki featuring an all-rainbow female line-up of Māori and Pasifika musicians, with kai; and Survive, three solo shows in one by queer artists: Escaping by Adam Burrell, Pray by Vincent Farane, and Lady Sings the Ooos by Nanu Turner-Sarah. Presented by charitable trust Tuatara Collective, artistic director Jason Te Mete says the festival aims to provide a space for artists to create 'something new, original and meaningful'. When: June 17-28 Where: Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland Central. Tickets from The Hau Festival centres LGBTQIA+ and indigenous voices through theatre and music. 9) Plan Ahead: Matariki at Māpura Studios The talented community of creatives who gather at Māpura Studios are once again holding a Matariki exhibition at Alberton this year. On display is a large-scale quilt that is a collaborative piece by artists from both their Morningside home base and satellite creative spaces across Tāmaki Makaurau, and represents connection, community and whānau. The fabric panels include painted works, drawings and monoprints, and hang alongside hand-crafted korowai and hand-woven kete. Against the backdrop of the historical house, the juxtaposition of the old and new recognises Matariki as a time to acknowledge the past and look to the future. Alberton will host an opening event on Wednesday evening, with the exhibition running for two and a half weeks thereafter. When: June 18-July 6, Wednesday-Sunday 10.30am-4.30pm (Opening event June 18, 5.30pm-7.30pm) Where: Alberton, 100 Mt Albert Rd, Mt Albert, Auckland. Free. Māpura Studios' collaborative Matariki quilt blends old and new artistic traditions. COMING UP Auckland Philharmonia Matariki with Ria Hall: June 19, Auckland Town Hall. Matariki Open Day at Stardome: June 20, Stardome Planetarium, Auckland. Bach Musica NZ, Mozart Piano Concerto in D minor and C.P.E. Bach Magnificat: June 22, Auckland Town Hall. Auckland Philharmonia's Six-Thirty Session: June 25, Auckland Town Hall. Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan: June 25-July 5, Q Loft Theatre, Auckland. Silo Theatre's Taniwha: June 26-July 13, Herald Theatre, Auckland. Black Faggot: June 25-29, Q Theatre, Auckland. NZ Youth Choir: June 27, Holy Trinity Cathedral, Parnell, Auckland. Doc Edge Festival: June 25–July 13, Auckland. July 16–27, Wellington & Christchurch. July 28–August 24, Virtual Cinema. Brew of Islands Festival: June 28, Bay of Islands. Peppa Pig's Fun Day Out LIVE: June 28-July 12, touring nationwide. Illusionist Anthony Street: July 6-August 10, touring nationwide. Art of Banksy: July 7-August 3, Aotea Centre, Auckland. Therapy: A Musical Comedy: July 8-12, Basement Theatre, Auckland. Takapuna Winter Lights Festival: July 24-27, Takapuna, Auckland. Auckland Food Show: July 24-27, Auckland Showgrounds. The World of WearableArt (WOW): September 18-October 5, TSB Arena, Wellington. Email canvasguide@ with brief details of your upcoming event, including dates/times, location and website.
Sydney Morning Herald
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Zombies, rage, horror: Jodie Comer says her new film feels very familiar
We all lived through what looked like a sci-fi scenario during the initial Covid lockdown, says Jodie Comer. Streets deserted, shops closed, birds singing to the empty air: it wasn't a zombie apocalypse, obviously, but London looked very much as it did in Danny Boyle's 2002 film 28 Days Later. 'When you think back to that movie, there was that famous shot of Cillian Murphy walking through a derelict London and back then, that was so hard to imagine,' she says. 'You thought: how did they manage to do that? And then, lo and behold, we had a pandemic and that was exactly what it was like.' The rabid, flesh-chewing humans in 28 Days Later were infected by what was called 'the rage virus', which transformed an ordinary person within seconds into a roaring, murderous fiend: rather different initial symptoms from a dry cough and loss of taste. The source of the disease in the film, however, was weirdly prescient: it was carried by monkeys in a Cambridge laboratory, and released by animal rights activists who became the disease's first carriers. And, as would later be the case in real life, once it was out there, nobody knew what to do. Comer, 32, is here to talk about her role in 28 Years Later, set in a version of Britain that has struggled alone with this virus – which has killed almost everybody – since it was first released. Quarantined from the rest of the world, the country is now no more than a scattering of survivors, including some clusters of infected who have found ways to live with their permanent rage. Once again, Boyle is working from a script by novelist and fellow filmmaker Alex Garland. It isn't a sequel, according to Boyle. 'It has precedents, obviously, in the original contagion, the original outbreak, but it's also a singular film in itself.' The characters have changed and, after 28 years, so have their circumstances. Comer is still best known as the wild, shape-shifting assassin Villanelle in Killing Eve, although the dazzling CV she has amassed since then ranges from the hit play about a lawyer dealing with her own rape, Prima Facie (which went online during Covid, to huge success), to the gritty 2023 American drama The Bikeriders. Also, by one of those strange, actorly coincidences, Comer also starred in the first British drama to tackle the social convulsion of Covid: Jack Thorne's Help (2021) culminated in Comer's care worker delivering a furious monologue to camera about the indifference of the community to the virus' many elderly victims. That was the cinema verite version of the virus; 28 Years Later is the full-blown horror retelling. It was, however, the prospect of working with Boyle – director of Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire and The Beach, as well as the landmark 28 Days Later – that drew her to the new film. 'It was a lot of the original crew from the first movie and they're all incredibly innovative,' she says. 'I was excited to be part of it.' Comer plays Isla, a woman living with her husband Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in a community of 150 people on Holy Island, off England's north-east coast. Without power or technology, they have reverted to a way of life Boyle says looks back to the 1950s as a moral safe haven, but which is in other ways medieval. The islanders protect themselves with bows and arrows; the island is connected to the mainland by a causeway, which is exposed or covered according to the tides. The story follows her son Spike (Alfie Williams) who is considered old enough at 12 to join a hunting party going to pick off infected on the mainland. 'Everyone had a point of reference to relate to a virus spreading,' says Comer. 'How that makes people behave, how it makes people depend on each other because of that need to survive.' And while Covid was, obviously, very different to the film's scenario, it showed that survival could be precarious. Everyone knows Isla is unwell. 'And she's been kind of ostracised, expected to stay in bed all day,' says Comer. 'Nobody knows how to deal with her. And we know what it's like just being confined within four walls – I think we got very familiar with everyone's bedrooms over Zoom during the pandemic.' Another recent phenomenon that fed into the thinking behind the film, says Boyle, was Brexit. 'Because that was about isolation,' he says. 'We turned our back on Europe and began to look backwards. It's portrayed as being a new future for us, but really it's nostalgic. The community in 28 Years Later, once they're shut off, lacks any of the technology that accompanied so much of our advancement. So they turn back to a vision of post-war Britain, accompanied by bows and arrows. Everything plays into it. It feels quite accurate about Britain, in certain respects – about England, anyway.' Loading Not that it is actually political, he corrects himself. Journalists have not been allowed to see the film and Boyle is clearly under instructions to keep the story under wraps, but he can say that it is about survival. 'In the obvious sense: how do the survivors go about surviving, which is about the Holy Island community and how their lives are organised – including the blooding of this young lad, taken to the mainland to get his first kill, because he has to learn how to defend the island.' Spike is the story's beating heart, not only because he is the adventurer but because he represents a generation that has no memory of life before the virus. 'If technology stops, if it's interrupted, that stops everything,' says Boyle. 'These are children – analogue natives – who have only heard rumours about life before culture stopped for them. Obviously the rest of the world carried on and that's depicted rather wonderfully in the film, but stories about their previous times become very distorted. 'We talked about it in terms of individual characters and how they would relate to their memories, how they would pass them on. And how much you can even hope. Do you maintain hope that things will return to the way they were, or do you accept the way things are now and make the best of it?' The virus survives too. Indeed, it thrives. 'What other world governments – the United Nations, the European Union – had hoped was that by isolating the UK, they would let the virus die out. Of course, the reality – and we know this from Covid – is that they don't die out. They mutate, becoming more or less powerful, more or less dangerous.' In 28 Days Later, the infected literally raged themselves to early deaths, starving as they screamed. After 28 years, there are still some emaciated infected collapsing mid-bellow to die. 'But not all of them have, so clearly, they've learned to feed. And they've learned to organise, at least a little. Some of them have also made choices about how they have evolved.' There are infected that have grown fat and slide along on all fours, like great slugs. There are infected whose genetic twists have allowed them to grow into titans. And there is a third survivor: nature itself. 'We filmed in very remote places in the UK to try and achieve that look of a world that hasn't been turned over to agriculture,' says Boyle. 'England was all forest until we, as a species, began adapting it to our needs, clearing it to the point where there is very little of it now that isn't clearly manicured. But, of course, nature will return it to forest.' Filming took place in woods in Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Scotland. Digital magic allows the film to show their coastlines as thickly wooded. 'It looks like Eden,' says Comer. 'It's the most beautiful thing to see on camera; when you're on location, it feels very freeing.' Some areas were not generally accessible. 'We were so lucky to be able to go there. There was a forest we filmed in where the forest floor was so thick with moss that it was bouncy like a mattress. It was the most magical place I had ever been. There were so many places we went to where you went 'wow, I would never have come here for a holiday'. That's the beauty of the job.' The film is planned as the first of a trilogy. The second instalment, The Bone Temple, has already been shot by Candyman director Nia DaCosta; the third script is on the way. All three storylines are shrouded in levels of mystery, although the eponymous bone temple of the second instalment appears in 28 Years Later. The set, which took six months to build, consists of 250,000 replica bones and 5500 skulls. It is the work of a doctor, Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes); Spike makes the risky journey to see Kelson with Isla in the hope that, despite his lack of actual medicines, he may be able to help her. Kelson has collected the femurs and skulls of the dead – both the infected and their victims – to build a monument to their passing. This great ossuary is a place of reflection and memory, which Boyle associates with a heart-covered Covid memory wall in London. 'It's got a power to it that is fundamental and the reasons for it being built are also fundamental to the humanity of the piece, I think,' he says. 'It is a horror film, but there are elements in it that are very moving.' Skulls are a visual shorthand in horror films, supposed to induce shivers. 'But it is also a reminder, as we know from many, many cultures, of our common humanity when everything is stripped away.' The memento mori, which obliges us to recognise that death comes to us all, embodies acceptance. Boyle has been careful to describe 28 Years Later as a film about family – about parenthood, a boy taking responsibility for the mother who can no longer look after him, about the strain that illness puts on a marriage – but it also fits squarely within the horror genre. It is a genre that is currently more popular than ever. 'I'm told one of the reasons it has expanded and grown is because women have become much more interested in it,' says Boyle. 'That's what the figures tell the studios, apparently. I find that fascinating. 'But I think horror is fascinating for all of us, because it gets our fears and looks at them acutely. Also you have a freedom in the genre that's really exciting to work in, I have to say.' Horror is inherently dramatic 'which is what you want cinema to be', but it can be funny, playful or emotionally complex. Comer felt she was seeing art being made, where there was concentrated intention behind every shot. 'I think Danny has delivered something really quite surprising, within the genre but deeply moving and very intimate and sombre and tender in moments,' she says. 'It really isn't what you expect it's going to be. And that's no small feat.' Loading 28 Years Later opens in cinemas on June 19.
The Age
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Zombies, rage, horror: Jodie Comer says her new film feels very familiar
We all lived through what looked like a sci-fi scenario during the initial Covid lockdown, says Jodie Comer. Streets deserted, shops closed, birds singing to the empty air: it wasn't a zombie apocalypse, obviously, but London looked very much as it did in Danny Boyle's 2002 film 28 Days Later. 'When you think back to that movie, there was that famous shot of Cillian Murphy walking through a derelict London and back then, that was so hard to imagine,' she says. 'You thought: how did they manage to do that? And then, lo and behold, we had a pandemic and that was exactly what it was like.' The rabid, flesh-chewing humans in 28 Days Later were infected by what was called 'the rage virus', which transformed an ordinary person within seconds into a roaring, murderous fiend: rather different initial symptoms from a dry cough and loss of taste. The source of the disease in the film, however, was weirdly prescient: it was carried by monkeys in a Cambridge laboratory, and released by animal rights activists who became the disease's first carriers. And, as would later be the case in real life, once it was out there, nobody knew what to do. Comer, 32, is here to talk about her role in 28 Years Later, set in a version of Britain that has struggled alone with this virus – which has killed almost everybody – since it was first released. Quarantined from the rest of the world, the country is now no more than a scattering of survivors, including some clusters of infected who have found ways to live with their permanent rage. Once again, Boyle is working from a script by novelist and fellow filmmaker Alex Garland. It isn't a sequel, according to Boyle. 'It has precedents, obviously, in the original contagion, the original outbreak, but it's also a singular film in itself.' The characters have changed and, after 28 years, so have their circumstances. Comer is still best known as the wild, shape-shifting assassin Villanelle in Killing Eve, although the dazzling CV she has amassed since then ranges from the hit play about a lawyer dealing with her own rape, Prima Facie (which went online during Covid, to huge success), to the gritty 2023 American drama The Bikeriders. Also, by one of those strange, actorly coincidences, Comer also starred in the first British drama to tackle the social convulsion of Covid: Jack Thorne's Help (2021) culminated in Comer's care worker delivering a furious monologue to camera about the indifference of the community to the virus' many elderly victims. That was the cinema verite version of the virus; 28 Years Later is the full-blown horror retelling. It was, however, the prospect of working with Boyle – director of Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire and The Beach, as well as the landmark 28 Days Later – that drew her to the new film. 'It was a lot of the original crew from the first movie and they're all incredibly innovative,' she says. 'I was excited to be part of it.' Comer plays Isla, a woman living with her husband Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in a community of 150 people on Holy Island, off England's north-east coast. Without power or technology, they have reverted to a way of life Boyle says looks back to the 1950s as a moral safe haven, but which is in other ways medieval. The islanders protect themselves with bows and arrows; the island is connected to the mainland by a causeway, which is exposed or covered according to the tides. The story follows her son Spike (Alfie Williams) who is considered old enough at 12 to join a hunting party going to pick off infected on the mainland. 'Everyone had a point of reference to relate to a virus spreading,' says Comer. 'How that makes people behave, how it makes people depend on each other because of that need to survive.' And while Covid was, obviously, very different to the film's scenario, it showed that survival could be precarious. Everyone knows Isla is unwell. 'And she's been kind of ostracised, expected to stay in bed all day,' says Comer. 'Nobody knows how to deal with her. And we know what it's like just being confined within four walls – I think we got very familiar with everyone's bedrooms over Zoom during the pandemic.' Another recent phenomenon that fed into the thinking behind the film, says Boyle, was Brexit. 'Because that was about isolation,' he says. 'We turned our back on Europe and began to look backwards. It's portrayed as being a new future for us, but really it's nostalgic. The community in 28 Years Later, once they're shut off, lacks any of the technology that accompanied so much of our advancement. So they turn back to a vision of post-war Britain, accompanied by bows and arrows. Everything plays into it. It feels quite accurate about Britain, in certain respects – about England, anyway.' Loading Not that it is actually political, he corrects himself. Journalists have not been allowed to see the film and Boyle is clearly under instructions to keep the story under wraps, but he can say that it is about survival. 'In the obvious sense: how do the survivors go about surviving, which is about the Holy Island community and how their lives are organised – including the blooding of this young lad, taken to the mainland to get his first kill, because he has to learn how to defend the island.' Spike is the story's beating heart, not only because he is the adventurer but because he represents a generation that has no memory of life before the virus. 'If technology stops, if it's interrupted, that stops everything,' says Boyle. 'These are children – analogue natives – who have only heard rumours about life before culture stopped for them. Obviously the rest of the world carried on and that's depicted rather wonderfully in the film, but stories about their previous times become very distorted. 'We talked about it in terms of individual characters and how they would relate to their memories, how they would pass them on. And how much you can even hope. Do you maintain hope that things will return to the way they were, or do you accept the way things are now and make the best of it?' The virus survives too. Indeed, it thrives. 'What other world governments – the United Nations, the European Union – had hoped was that by isolating the UK, they would let the virus die out. Of course, the reality – and we know this from Covid – is that they don't die out. They mutate, becoming more or less powerful, more or less dangerous.' In 28 Days Later, the infected literally raged themselves to early deaths, starving as they screamed. After 28 years, there are still some emaciated infected collapsing mid-bellow to die. 'But not all of them have, so clearly, they've learned to feed. And they've learned to organise, at least a little. Some of them have also made choices about how they have evolved.' There are infected that have grown fat and slide along on all fours, like great slugs. There are infected whose genetic twists have allowed them to grow into titans. And there is a third survivor: nature itself. 'We filmed in very remote places in the UK to try and achieve that look of a world that hasn't been turned over to agriculture,' says Boyle. 'England was all forest until we, as a species, began adapting it to our needs, clearing it to the point where there is very little of it now that isn't clearly manicured. But, of course, nature will return it to forest.' Filming took place in woods in Northumberland, North Yorkshire and Scotland. Digital magic allows the film to show their coastlines as thickly wooded. 'It looks like Eden,' says Comer. 'It's the most beautiful thing to see on camera; when you're on location, it feels very freeing.' Some areas were not generally accessible. 'We were so lucky to be able to go there. There was a forest we filmed in where the forest floor was so thick with moss that it was bouncy like a mattress. It was the most magical place I had ever been. There were so many places we went to where you went 'wow, I would never have come here for a holiday'. That's the beauty of the job.' The film is planned as the first of a trilogy. The second instalment, The Bone Temple, has already been shot by Candyman director Nia DaCosta; the third script is on the way. All three storylines are shrouded in levels of mystery, although the eponymous bone temple of the second instalment appears in 28 Years Later. The set, which took six months to build, consists of 250,000 replica bones and 5500 skulls. It is the work of a doctor, Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes); Spike makes the risky journey to see Kelson with Isla in the hope that, despite his lack of actual medicines, he may be able to help her. Kelson has collected the femurs and skulls of the dead – both the infected and their victims – to build a monument to their passing. This great ossuary is a place of reflection and memory, which Boyle associates with a heart-covered Covid memory wall in London. 'It's got a power to it that is fundamental and the reasons for it being built are also fundamental to the humanity of the piece, I think,' he says. 'It is a horror film, but there are elements in it that are very moving.' Skulls are a visual shorthand in horror films, supposed to induce shivers. 'But it is also a reminder, as we know from many, many cultures, of our common humanity when everything is stripped away.' The memento mori, which obliges us to recognise that death comes to us all, embodies acceptance. Boyle has been careful to describe 28 Years Later as a film about family – about parenthood, a boy taking responsibility for the mother who can no longer look after him, about the strain that illness puts on a marriage – but it also fits squarely within the horror genre. It is a genre that is currently more popular than ever. 'I'm told one of the reasons it has expanded and grown is because women have become much more interested in it,' says Boyle. 'That's what the figures tell the studios, apparently. I find that fascinating. 'But I think horror is fascinating for all of us, because it gets our fears and looks at them acutely. Also you have a freedom in the genre that's really exciting to work in, I have to say.' Horror is inherently dramatic 'which is what you want cinema to be', but it can be funny, playful or emotionally complex. Comer felt she was seeing art being made, where there was concentrated intention behind every shot. 'I think Danny has delivered something really quite surprising, within the genre but deeply moving and very intimate and sombre and tender in moments,' she says. 'It really isn't what you expect it's going to be. And that's no small feat.' Loading 28 Years Later opens in cinemas on June 19.
Daily Mirror
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Jodie Comer's unusual ways he chooses new roles after eye-opening moment
Killing Eve legend Jodie Comer has revealed the usual way she chooses new roles, admitting she follows her instincts nowadays as she prepares to tour with a play Jodie Comer says she relies on her instincts when choosing new roles to play. The actor, 32, will be in a touring version of the play Prima Facie and stars in new post-apocalyptic horror sequel 28 Years Later. Looking back on her work in Free Guy, a 2021 action comedy starring Ryan Reynolds, she says it gave her a moment of clarity about her career: 'It was my first film and I had the most amazing experience on that job – they were just the most gentle, inclusive, supportive people, and it was incredibly fun… But I realised, when I was coming home, Ah, there's something I'm not feeling. I feel like I'm not stretching. Or not discovering. And I realised that it was the emotional part of it. I wasn't exercising [that] part of myself.' Speaking to GQ, she added: 'I realised that's actually where I get my fulfilment – trying to find those places. If the instincts aren't there, if I'm not excited by it, then I just don't want to go near it because then I'm pulling from an artificial place. It feels almost dishonest with myself.' In 28 Days Later a virus called 'rage' has obliterated the country. But in real life she struggles to summon up her own rage and it often turns to another emotion. Jodie said: 'I've realised my own [rage] just immediately goes to a very emotional place – my anger can so quickly go to tears. I think I swallow it as well,. I think, as women, we suppress it and that's probably why I have trouble accessing it – I've done that so much that it feels kind of foreign, like I'm not quite sure where to pull it from.' The actor, who is best known for playing Villanelle in BBC spy series Killing Eve previously starred in a run of Prima Facie in London's West End in 2022. It follows the story of a barrister named Tessa, who specialises in defending men accused of sexual assault, and whose view of the legal system changes after she is sexually assaulted herself. Speaking about the reaction to the play from men, she said: "I imagine it's quite confronting, I don't know. Maybe also, when they read what it's about, they think, 'well, that's not something that's directed at me'. "I imagine, for a man, it will force them to look back at their own behaviour, which I imagine would be - or could be - potentially very uncomfortable. But (sexual assault) isn't 'a woman's issue', you know what I mean?" She added that a male police officer who had visited the show wrote a letter to the production afterwards. Jodie said: "I don't think I've had a deep, meaningful conversation with many men about the play, actually. "I do know there was a male police officer that came in one night, and he wrote in to the production. "He was kind of saying, 'this is me - I see myself, and I recognise the kind of work that needs to be done as a police officer'." The actor, who is best known for playing Villanelle in BBC spy series Killing Eve, said many women had contacted the production after seeing it to share their personal stories. Speaking about the interactions, she explained: "It's so beautiful, and it's so rare, for someone to look you in the eyes and share something of themselves, and there's so much that isn't said, but even in just the briefest of moments, it's like, 'that was me, or, I feel that'." * The Heroes Issue of British GQ is available via digital download and on newsstands on 10th June..
