Suzie Miller is busy. Very busy. She’s the Australian playwright du jour after a string of hits including the acclaimed Prima Facie, RBG: Of Many, One and, more recently, Inter Alia, which stars Rosamund Pike and has had a sell-out season with the National Theatre in London.
Inter Alia is about a female judge and is another in Miller’s series of legal dramas. After all, she was a lawyer before becoming a playwright and her husband, Justice Robert Beech-Jones, is a High Court judge. So, it’s no surprise that some of her plays have legal themes.
Miller fans might have wished they were in London for the recent season of Inter Alia, but the good news is that it can actually be seen in Australian cinemas from September 25 as part of the NT Live series.
I caught up with Miller and producer Trish Wadley in Brisbane on the weekend. Wadley hails from Brisbane and is based in London. She has been producing Miller’s work for a few years now. Last Sunday, Miller participated in the Women of the World (WOW) Festival as part of The WOW Show event at Brisbane Festival.
On Monday she and Wadley jetted to Sydney (she mostly divides her time between a home in Sydney and one in London) to announce a season there of another new play, Strong is the New Pretty, which focuses on the formation of the Australian Football League Women’s competition, the AFLW. Sydney Theatre Company will present it at the Sydney Opera House in October 2026. It will be directed by Lee Lewis, a former artistic director of Queensland Theatre. This is something of a reunion since Lewis also directed Prima Facie, which was a huge hit.
The good news for us is, however, that Strong is the New Pretty will have its world premiere before Sydney at QPAC next September, as part of Brisbane Festival.
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Miller, 62, has a soft spot for Queensland. The family has a flat on the Gold Coast, she once lived at Lower Beechmont in the Gold Coast hinterland and she comes to Brisbane, where her daughter went to school for a time, as often as she can.
“I have such a love affair with Queensland,” Miller says when we meet for coffee at The Calile Hotel in Fortitude Valley. “Working here with La Boite and others has really helped develop me as a playwright. I loved living at Lower Beechmont and very nearly bought a property there.”
It was her friend and producer Trish Wadley who convinced her to offer Strong is the New Pretty to Brisbane Festival.
“Suzie loves it here and that’s why we have this major gift, a world premiere,” Wadley says. “I commissioned the play and went to Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina and said, as a Queenslander I will bring you a new Suzie Miller play about sport for the Olympic City. She said, I’ll take it.”
It will be a kind of parting gift from Bezzina, who finishes up with Brisbane Festival soon to take the helm at Brisbane Powerhouse. Creative Australia is funding the play through its Creative Futures Fund.
Miller says she’s thrilled the play will have its world premiere here, thanks to Brisbane Festival, but firstly thanks to Wadley who is something of a dynamo. Miller says when they first met, she “didn’t realise Trish was a Brisbane chick”. “Then I came back here and realised she was Brisbane royalty,” adds Miller. (The Wadley clan is well known in Brissie.)
Wadley says she is amazed at Miller’s productivity. “It’s like there are three of her,” she says.
Miller says working as a lawyer gave her a taste for hard work and – along with a passion writing – her job.
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It’s hard to keep up with her and it’s hard for her to keep up with herself as she travels the world following her plays. Prima Facie has been produced in many countries including Turkey and Inter Alia looks like going global, too, and is planned for more shows in London, crossing the Thames to West End then Broadway.
I was born and raised in Melbourne, absolutely saturated in AFL culture … I felt it excluded who I was and my experiences
Miller has written another play about The Troubles in Ireland and more works are in the pipeline. Strong is the New Pretty is a distinctly Australian play, although it also has universal appeal.
“It was sparked by the advent of the AFLW,” Miller says. “I’m very close friends with Governor-General Sam Mostyn. She was a commissioner of the AFL, the only female commissioner, and kept raising the idea of a women’s league. I was born and raised in Melbourne, absolutely saturated in AFL culture but, to me as a young girl, the fact that it was only boys playing and only boys umpiring meant that I felt it excluded who I was and my experiences.
“The introduction of women playing football, which I recognise now was all over the country but below the surface and certainly not visible, was brought to my attention by the advent of the AFLW. I interviewed many of the women who had been trying for generations to introduce women’s footy, the inaugural players of AFLW, and Sam Mostyn.
“These were the initiators and wise women of AFLW, and they worked hard together to bring a women’s league into existence. Women might have been playing AFL for generations in communities or home-spun teams, yet had never really been acknowledged, organised into a visible sporting league or professionalised.”
The core cast for Strong is the New Pretty will feature Sheridan Harbridge (who starred in Prima Facie), Amy Igram and Lucy Bell.
Miller seems to manage to tap into the zeitgeist with each new work and her themes are, as I said, universal, which is why her plays are now being performed all over the world. She’s big in China, for example, and is off to Beijing in November where the cinematic version of Inter Alia will be playing.
She’s on a roll and appears to be loving it.
National Theatre Live – Inter Alia is in cinemas nationally from September 25.