Jodie Comer wins best actress Tony Award for Prima Facie
Jodie Comer has scooped the Tony Award for best leading actress for her performance in the one-woman play Prima Facie.
The role was her Broadway debut, coming hot on the heels of her West End debut in the same role.
The live cinema version of the show – part of National Theatre Live series – broke records as the highest-grossing event cinema release in the UK and Ireland.
Comer called her Tony win “surreal” after a run that had been “just been about putting one foot in front of the other”.
She was forced to halt a performance last week after experiencing breathing difficulties due to polluted air caused by wildfires in Canada.
The play explores how sexual assault laws fail survivors, putting a defence lawyer in the witness box.
Jodie Comer in Prima Facie. Pic: Helen Murray/The Press Room via AP
Speaking about her character Tessa, Comer said: “This woman in this play has been my greatest teacher and I have to thank Suzie Miller for that, who wrote this magnificent piece.
“Without her writing that, [I] would not be here so this feels just as much Suzie’s as it is mine.”
The actress went on to thank members of the production team and apologised to her friends and family for being “absent” in the past year.
“To every person who feels represented by Tessa, this has been my greatest honour,” she said, quickly adding “and it continues to be – there’s three weeks left!”
Pic: AP
The award was presented at a show that was unscripted due to the ongoing Hollywood writers’ strike.
Opening the show, host Ariana DeBose told audiences to “buckle up” after warning them the show would be completely unscripted.
The strike, involving more than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), had previously threatened to derail the show.
The WGA previously agreed to a waiver for the show, so that its members would not picket the event and allow the broadcast on US network CBS to go ahead.
Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee made history as the first non-binary actors to be recognised at the awards.
Other winners included Sean Hayes for his role in Good Night, Oscar, and Victoria Clark for her performance in the musical Kimberly Akimbo.
Kimberly Akimbo was named best musical, while Leopoldstadt won best play.
Donald Trump has said he is considering “taking away” the US citizenship of actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell, despite a Supreme Court ruling that expressly prohibits a government from doing so.
In a post on Truth Social on Saturday, the US president said: “Because of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
He also labelled O’Donnell, who has moved to Ireland, as a “threat to humanity” and said she should “remain in the wonderful country of Ireland, if they want her”.
O’Donnell responded on Instagram by posting a photograph of Mr Trump with Jeffrey Epstein.
“You are everything that is wrong with America and I’m everything you hate about what’s still right with it,” she wrote in the caption.
“I’m not yours to silence. I never was.”
Rosie O’Donnell moved to Ireland after Donald Trump secured a second term. Pic: AP
O’Donnell moved to Ireland with her 12-year-old son in January after Mr Trump had secured a second term.
She has said she’s in the process of obtaining Irish citizenship based on family lineage and that she would only return to the US “when it is safe for all citizens to have equal rights there in America”.
O’Donnell and the US president have criticised each other publicly for years, in an often-bitter back-and-forth that predates Mr Trump’s move into politics.
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Will Trump address parliament on UK state visit?
This is just the latest threat by the president to revoke the citizenship of someone he has disagreed with, most recently his former ally Elon Musk.
But the two situations are different as while Musk was born in South Africa, O’Donnell was born in the US and has a constitutional right to American citizenship.
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Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, said the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case that the fourteenth amendment of the constitution prevents the government from taking away citizenship.
“The president has no authority to take away the citizenship of a native-born US citizen,” he added.
“In short, we are nation founded on the principle that the people choose the government; the government cannot choose the people.”
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