There is no great fanfare when Jodie Comer enters the unfussy local pub that she has chosen for our meeting. I don’t even notice her arriving, ordering a herbal tea, finding a seat in the corner of the bar. And yet less than two weeks ago she was on stage for her triumphant final performance as Tessa Ensler in the one-woman phenomenon Prima Facie, a role for which she has won pretty much all the theatre awards going. She is also the actress who erupted onto our screens as the assassin Villanelle in Killing Eve (getting all the awards for that too), and who always seems to steal the show, even when she is not meant to. She was hard to miss in films including The Last Duel alongside Matt Damon and Adam Driver, Free Guy with Ryan Reynolds, big franchises such as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later with Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
The dynamism of her presence in action demands attention, but in real life she is more low-key. “I like this place because it’s not too busy, and look: we can sit by the window, in the sunshine,” she says when I do finally find her. The actress, casual in jeans, a baggy white jumper and delicate gold jewellery, is an attentive conversationalist. We are in London, near where she lives with her dog, and Comer is happy to be home after the nine-week regional tour of Prima Facie. Written by Suzie Miller, a former lawyer, the play is about a defence barrister who finds herself on the other side of the legal system when she experiences sexual assault. It was initially staged in Miller’s native Australia, but its impact and success in Britain can in large part be put down to Comer’s coruscating performances. She debuted in London in 2022, before taking the play to Broadway in 2023, then around the UK and Ireland, finishing in March this year in her home city of Liverpool. “There was something really cathartic and serendipitous about me coming home – about Tess coming home.”
Marcus Ohlsson
Comer wears embroidered cardigan; silk T-shirt; jeans, all Chanel. Ring; bracelet; earrings, all Boodles
When she first starred in the play, Comer was 29 and had never done theatre before: “I was very anxious, very aware that people were thinking, ‘Is she going to be able to do this?’” Four years later, there is no question of her ability to master the material, but she has changed in other ways too. “I have more confidence, I know myself more,” she says. “I feel that when you’re playing a character with certain attributes, you are forced to touch upon, discover and illuminate those parts of yourself. They might be parts you’ve neglected, or that don’t feel very present in your day-to-day. That assuredness and confidence that Tess has – I found it easier to connect with those attributes.”
Related Story
The role also requires Comer to connect with confusion, despair, violation and disbelief, but this time she had a drama-therapist, Wabriya King, who was on hand to support her to manage any overwhelming emotions with psychotherapy and movement. After a show, Comer would meditate, use breathwork and stretch. “You hold a lot of tension playing that kind of material, so it’s about letting it out of your body and bringing back a sense of safety,” she says. “Riya was amazing at reminding me to dedicate time to myself.”
Marcus Ohlsson
Top; trousers, both Celine. Earrings, David Morris
It seems inevitable, considering the intensity with which Comer engages with her parts, that it would have some impact on her real life. Her next role will be in The Death of Robin Hood opposite Hugh Jackman. Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, the mind behind Pig and A Quiet Place: Day One, the film reimagines our merry green-clad hero as a merciless brigand whose years of violence have exacted their own heavy toll. Close to death, he finds himself at a holy island, under the care of Bridget, who is played by Comer with a stillness and grace that is a counterbalance to Jackman’s grisly and ageing outlaw. They are killer and healer, darkness and light. “I love the character, I love what she stands
for,” she says. “I related to her. Holistic medicine, nature: those are things that I’ve become interested in. For my preparation, I read books about women and healthcare in that historical period. But I also read Why Women Grow [by Alice Vincent], which inspired
me. Like Bridget, I felt as if I was naturally moving into a place of looking after myself from within, and it’s about how nature provides so much of that for us. How disconnected we’ve become from that, in the West.”
Related Story
Comer was so inspired that she signed up for a six-month herbalism course. “As much as I do research for a character, I don’t think I’ve really studied anything since I left school. That was quite surprising to me. I was like, ‘Gosh, Jodie, you have to stay curious.’” She laughs when I ask if she is intending to become a part-time dispensing herbalist. “It’s more for myself, in my own house. I really enjoy things like making my own teas.”
Marcus Ohlsson
Top, Celine. Earrings, David Morris
She is, she says, “a homebody. I love cooking. I’d much rather cook a meal than go out”. When she has to travel for work, like the two months she spent in Belfast filming Robin Hood, she always has a rental with a kitchen. “It’s a big thing for me. I’ll be travelling up in my car with all these jars of ingredients rattling around, my yoga mat, my blankets.” She likes crystals, and other little keepsakes that she picks up. “I am a bit of a magpie,” she says. But, more than anything, she yearns for a garden. “My dream, and I’m manifesting this, is to have a space where I can just be in my underwear, gardening.”
“My dream is to have a space where I can just be in my underwear, gardening”
It is possible that the healing gene – if not the acting one – was passed down from her parents. Comer’s father Jimmy is a physio and massage therapist who works for Everton Football Club. “I don’t know whether my dad would think of himself like that, but he is a healer in many ways,” she says. Meanwhile, her mother Donna works for Merseyrail. Comer was raised in a suburb of Liverpool; as a child, she was always doing impressions, being the entertainer. “My mum and dad didn’t come from this world but saw how much I loved it and so invested in it, driving me to auditions, chaperoning me.” She started going to a local drama school at the age of 11, and was soon getting small roles in shows such as Holby City and Waterloo Road. “I wasn’t very studious, but when I was out on a job, that was when I came alive.” She decided to bypass drama school and started working after her A-levels, getting her first major role aged 18 in Channel 4’s My Mad Fat Diary. “Part of me has always felt like a bit of a fraud for that. I had an insecurity about not being classically trained,”
she says. “When people make me speak about [the canonical] works, I think I’m not familiar with that, or I don’t enjoy that, and it feels taboo to say so.” I ask if she’s read any Shakespeare: “I am trying!”
Marcus Ohlsson
Dress; matching polo tops (around shoulders and waist); slingbacks, all Erdem. Earrings, Boodles
What she did always have, though, was an ability to bring deep emotional texture to the roles she played, combined with a desire to be part of projects that have wider social impact. When she was 12, participating in a local talent show, she performed
a monologue from the point of view of a girl whose father had died in the Hillsborough disaster – although she was so overwhelmed by the material that she started to cry when introducing it. “My emotions were very accessible to me at such a young age. I remember my drama teacher saying, ‘What you have is amazing, but you can’t be crying before you’ve even started.’ All this stuff was inside me and I didn’t quite know what to do with it.”
Comer might be better able to control her emotions these days, but she still seeks out stirring parts that affect her. “That type of material invigorates me,” she says. “The work in which I am having to explore an emotion very deeply, or inhabit an experience so far from my own, or leave an experience feeling spent, like I’ve explored something I couldn’t really explain, is what propels me.”
Marcus Ohlsson
Coat; bodysuit (just seen); heels, all Gucci. Earrings, De Beers. Tights, Falke
One of her early champions was Stephen Graham, the actor and co-creator of the series Adolescence. Comer and Graham worked together on the drama Help, written by Jack Thorne, in which Comer’s powerful portrayal of a nursing-home care assistant during the Covid pandemic broke the fourth wall and won her a Bafta. Likewise, Prima Facie dealt with live issues, but of systemic misogyny in the legal system, engaging with the fact that one woman in three will be a victim of sexual assault. The play precipitated tangible social change, resulting in the delivery of school workshops on consent and the creation of forums where survivors can share their stories. “I’ve seen the healing, the opportunity it has provided people to face themselves and their experiences, to communicate with the ones they love,” says Comer. “It has inspired people to pursue law, or have a conversation with a relative about something they’d never spoken about before. People are less alone than they thought they were. That provides a huge amount of hope for me, and affirms that doing work like this is powerful and important.”
Marcus Ohlsson
Coat; bodysuit (just seen); heels, all Gucci. Earrings, De Beers. Tights, Falke
That does not mean that everything Comer does has to be intensely serious. Killing Eve was fun, in a psychotic vaudeville way. Plus, she says: “Villanelle blessed me. Because she was so multi-faceted, people couldn’t put me in a box. That offered me a lot of freedom.” Comer has just finished filming Stuffed, a musical in which she plays a taxidermist who wants to stuff a human being. It’s one of the wackiest concepts for a film I have ever heard. She laughs. “I know. I got the script just after Robin. I’d said no to a couple of things that didn’t feel right, and it was just a breath of fresh air – original material, completely new score.” She has long wanted to do a musical, though her singing talent, which you can hear when she covers Mariah Carey’s ‘Fantasy’ in Free Guy, is little known thus far. As a child she loved Cats, Blood Brothers and Guys and Dolls, and in her teens thought she might make a career in musical theatre. But Stuffed is no Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. “She finds a man on the dark web who volunteers. And it’s about what transpires when they meet each other and this relationship forms. It’s just so unbelievably surprising, so full of tenderness.”
“Villanelle blessed me. Because she was so multi-faceted, people couldn’t put me in a box”
Comer will be spending the summer continuing her herbalism course, taking a break. “It’s become more important to me when I’m not working to get back into my own routines, to see friends and family. Experiencing the world in a way that probably sounds very mundane. To be at home, read a book, go to the gym, walk the dog, maybe go to see some music. Re-grounding, committing to those things that fall by the wayside when I am in the depths of something.”
She has recently loved seeing Rebecca Lucy Taylor in Teeth ’n’ Smiles, and the Tracey Emin exhibition at Tate Modern. “I’m drawn to art that is exposing, personal and courageous.” She was an executive producer on Help, participating in the creating of the script, but has not done any other writing, although it is something that she is interested in pursuing. “I’m a big fan of the essayist Melissa Febos. I’ve just devoured her books Girlhood and The Dry Season because there is so much she speaks about that I feel like I connect to. I like that kind of introspection.”
Marcus Ohlsson
Jacket; top; jeans, all Chloé
Comer is 33, and believes she is entering a new phase. “I’ve never really had milestones like, ‘I want to be here by this time; this is where I see my life.’ Maybe that’s detrimental sometimes, because I can be a bit loosey-goosey,” she says. But after the frenetic pace
of the past decade, during which she has done so much work, investing herself so intensely in each part, her focus is shifting from the professional to the personal. “Everything now is about being on a quest to know who I am, to be able to take care of myself and listen to myself and honour myself. I think we are always seeking exterior opinion, validation and advice, but a lot of the time, we know innately what we need, what we desire, so it is a case of just reconnecting with that. I love my job and I’m very grateful for it, but it’s important to give just as much energy to myself.”
Marcus Ohlsson
This article appears in the June issue of Harper’s Bazaar, on newsstands from 14 May.
‘The Death of Robin Hood’ is out on 4 September.
Photographs by Marcus Ohlsson.
Styled by Charlie Harrington.
Hair by Sam McKnight at Premier, assisted by Ryan Steedman, using Hair by Sam McKnight.
Make-up by Wendy Rowe at Artlist.
Manicure by Michelle Humphrey at LMC Worldwide, using Essie.
Stylist’s assistants: Hadya Tuofiq and Nina Gahrén Williamson.
Shot at Hall Barn Estate
Related Story
