Suzie Miller thought footy was just for blokes. Then one game blew her away

A popular musician is said to be in their imperial phase when everything they release becomes a hit, like Elton John in the early 1970s, Madonna in the late 1980s or Lady Gaga at the end of the noughties. It describes an artist at the top of their game when they seem to be everywhere, to dominate the medium they work in and to make an indelible mark on the culture.If September 2026 is any indication then Suzie Miller is surely experiencing her imperial phase. She has a new novel out, Inter Alia (Picador), based on her own award-winning play, which had a sellout season at the National Theatre in London last year.She has a movie, Prima Facie, having its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival – a major Oscars launch pad – with an A-list star, Cynthia Erivo, in the lead.And she has a new play, Strong Is the New Pretty, opening at Brisbane Festival ahead of a national tour – which is what brings her to a chilly rehearsal room at the Wharf Theatres in Sydney on a crisp and sunny Friday.The play is the story of the birth of the AFLW, and features a cast of eight women led by Tara Morice (Strictly Ballroom), Lucy Bell and Amy Ingram.Suzie Miller, seated, with three of the stars of Strong Is The New Pretty, from left, Edyll, Amy Ingram and Nyasha Ogden.Audrey RichardsonMiller has been mulling over the idea for the play since witnessing the inaugural AFL Women’s grand final at the former Metricon Stadium on the Gold Coast in March 2017, when the Adelaide Crows defeated the Brisbane Lions.“I grew up in Melbourne, so you’d think I’d be a massive AFL fan,” Miller says. “But as a young girl I thought: how come it’s just boys? So I didn’t really invest in it the way other people did.“It didn’t even occur to me that maybe girls could play AFL. So I was blown away when the AFLW came to pass. I thought, how many other areas in the world do we not envisage that this is a possible place to have equality until we actually see it happen before us?”Miller rolled up her sleeves and interviewed players, coaches, commissioners, people involved at the grassroots – “everyone you could imagine”.“They had to get over all the hurdles of ‘how are we going to get sponsorship?’ ‘How are we going to get media on board?’ Because every single person had the same view: ‘Oh, no, women don’t play football’.”Aussie Rules is now the second-most played code among women and girls in Australia (after soccer). The AFLW season attracted more than 317,000 spectators in 2025.As Miller’s research progressed, she became aware that the competition came about not through the work of one individual but through collaboration and the passing of the baton.Sarah Giles, who stepped in to direct Strong Is the New Pretty at short notice when Lee Lewis had to withdraw for family reasons, describes it as “a very clever play”. “Much like Suzie’s other work, she smuggles in the politics. She’s using football as a vehicle to talk about equality on a much bigger level. So the play becomes this very inspiring example of how many, many women over time fought for the right to be treated as equals, and succeeded.”Like her acclaimed earlier plays, Strong Is the New Pretty celebrates a particularly Australian brand of female grit. “There is something remarkable about Australian women and I just wanted to write this for them,” she says.Brisbane-based actor Ingram, who plays several of the play’s more than 50 characters, says Miller is extremely open and collaborative for a playwright the whole world is watching right now.From left, Amy Ingram, Edyll and Nyasha Ogden star as AFLW players in Suzie Miller’s new play.Audrey Richardson“We have a lot of big, open discussions about things. She’s a font of knowledge and she pours all of that into her work. We’re really lucky to have her in the room with us so we can ask questions.”Giles says Miller’s women “have this incredible ability to hold court … and I don’t just mean that in a lawyer sense. She has this way of connecting an audience to a female character that’s so authentic and immediate and present.”Trained in science and law, Miller didn’t see a professional play until she was in her early 20s; she learnt her craft at UNSW and NIDA while working as a human rights and youth lawyer.She famously had to choose (in 2009) between becoming a magistrate and accepting a writing residency at the National Theatre in London. London won out, and she moved over with her two young children and her husband, barrister (now High Court judge) Robert Beech-Jones.Suzie Miller had to choose between the law and writing.Audrey Richardson“I gave up my whole legal profession to be a playwright. That doesn’t mean I knew I’d get there because I didn’t. I worked like an absolute dog. But, you know, I always dreamt that maybe, you never know.”She had already written about 30 plays when Prima Facie premiered at Sydney’s 105-seat Stables Theatre in the Griffin Theatre Company production starring Sheridan Harbridge and directed by Lee Lewis.Sheridan Harbridge in last year’s revival of Prima Facie.Sam TabonPrima Facie homes in on a criminal barrister, Tessa, who defends people accused of sexual assault. When Tessa is herself raped she experiences the way the legal process puts victims on trial. Giles recalls being “knocked for six” by it.“What I found extraordinary was how Suzie and Lee and Sheridan placed the audience on a particular side of the argument and put us in a warm, comfortable bath that we all knew,” the director says. “And then, through the shifting experience of that central character, we were pushed to the other side of that argument.”The production toured the country, and Harbridge has just wrapped encore seasons in Melbourne and Sydney.When the play opened in London, with Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer in the lead, it inspired barristers and judges to set up TESSA (The Examination of Serious Sexual Assault) to spearhead legislative changes. The National Theatre’s filmed version is now mandatory viewing for high court judges in Northern Ireland.Jodie Comer in the UK production of Prima Facie, which helped usher in legislative change.APPrima Facie has been staged in more than 50 countries and translated into more than 30 languages. Miller has seen it performed in Greek, Italian, Norwegian, German and Mandarin (“which was magnificent”).Comer won the 2023 Olivier Award for best actress, and Miller won for best new play over such household names as Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing) and Peter Morgan (The Crown). It was a night Miller won’t forget in a hurry.“Someone did say to me, just remember that when they make the announcement, the camera is still on you. One time a very famous playwright who didn’t win went, ‘Oh, shit’. Don’t make that mistake.“I was thinking, there’s no way I’m going to win this. And then they said my name and I went, ‘Oh, f---’! It was even worse!”Prima Facie’s National Theatre production got a worldwide cinema release but now there’s an actual movie version: a UK-Australian co-production under the helm of BAFTA-winning director Susanna White (Andor), starring Wicked’s Cynthia Erivo.Cynthia Erivo in the film version of Prima Facie.Nicola Dove/Embankment Films “I went with my husband the other week. We were both crying at the end of it,” Miller says. “You sort of hold your breath through the second half, the whole way through … even though I know exactly what’s going to happen because I wrote the screenplay.”Miller also adapted Prima Facie as a novel in 2023, and it’s an indication of its impact on the legal profession that lawyers for an accused rapist in Victoria tried – unsuccessfully – to argue for a mistrial on the basis of one of the jurors bringing a copy into the jury room.Her new book is published on September 29. It’s the novel version of Inter Alia, the play that opened at the National Theatre as Rosamund Pike’s first stage role in 14 years, selling out before rehearsals had even begun. (Pike, like Comer, won an Olivier; the production heads to Broadway in December.)Rosamund Pike in Inter Alia.Manuel Harlan/NT LiveA companion piece to Prima Facie, Inter Alia also tackles sexual assault law but from the point of view of a judge who prides herself on kindly treatment of alleged victims under cross-examination. Her perspective is rattled when someone close to her is charged with a serious crime.I tell Miller I have sons, and read the book in an escalating mood of panic. She says that Inter Alia (the play) has spurred interrogation of the manosphere.“It’s more than just a space that’s ugly. What it’s also doing to boys is actually co-opting their sexuality and their way of being in the world, telling them that there’s only one form of masculinity that matters.”She is heartened by the level of discussion the play has opened up.“People email me, saying, ‘We all went out for dinner afterwards and we talked about it at length’ …“I’m as guilty as anyone. You know, raising teenagers, I never thought to talk to them about what porn they might consume. Because it’s not a comfortable conversation.”Miller was shocked at how much she has enjoyed novel writing, “because I’m such a theatre animal”. Twenty-six years as a dramatist was a great preparation for writing novels, she says. “You know how to keep an audience’s attention. How to keep the plot moving forward.”Miller’s other legal hit prior to Inter Alia was her one-woman portrait of US Supreme Court trailblazer Ruth Bader Ginsburg,RGB: Of Many, One. Its extended Australian tour gave Heather Mitchell a late-career star vehicle.Heather Mitchell as Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Of Many, One.Prudence UptonThe play is finally to be staged in America. “I’m looking forward to seeing how the New Yorkers respond to it because, of course, she was one of them.”The fact Miller will have two shows playing in New York next year, and that it’s merely a sidenote to this story, gets me thinking again about Miller and her imperial phase.But I’m conscious this is the kind of phallocentric, male-journo thinking that’s at odds with the kind of heroism she is depicting in Strong Is the New Pretty.“There is no single central character, which is what’s beautiful about this,” Giles says. “It sort of starts from a singular perspective and then refracts out as you gather more and more people who were part of that story.“It’s what we’re trying to mirror in the staging of the play. So it becomes about a bunch of women coming together in a theatrical sense, creating something extraordinary out of nothing.”“I think that’s how women manage often, how they actually get things done,” Miller says. “And I’m not saying it’s better or worse than the way men manage but [for men] there’s more of a hero’s journey where men rise to the top, and it’s like they were the one person that got it done …“A new play is where you all hold hands and dream it into being. Because, you know, everything is brand new. And we’ve got a lot of incredible optimism and positivity and talent in that room.“In a way, the women in the room are reminding me why I wrote the play.”Strong Is the New Pretty is at Brisbane’s QPAC, September 1-19; Canberra Theatre Centre, September 24-26; Geelong Arts Centre, October 8-11; and the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House, October 22-December 5. Inter Alia is published on September 29 by Picador Australia. 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