Sof Forrest stars in new Australian production of Broadway hit play Prima Facie
The Perth-raised actor is carving out a powerful on-stage legacy – one that’s uniquely different to father Twiggy Forrest.
When Sof Forrest is in the zone, nobody is faster. In conversation, the actor talks at a rapid-fire clip, launching themselves from subject to subject like they are on a climbing gym: from current affairs to getting married to Sydney’s best Korean barbecue, barely taking a breath. They even finish their Vogue photo shoot in record time, with three looks shot before I make it to the studio to interview them one damp greyscale morning in May.
I first see Forrest standing at the camera monitor in a white denim pinstripe set from Baum und Pferdgarten, perusing selects with the photographer. After saying hello, I tell them I’ll wait while they get changed back into their own clothes – they’ve already done that, too. The outfit was actually purchased for their wedding last year, where they were surrounded by friends and family including parents Andrew and Nicola, the mining magnate and philanthropist, and sister Grace, an anti-slavery advocate. Forrest’s wife Zara, a fellow actor who now works in renewable energy, wore this exact look to their post-wedding recovery lunch and they borrowed it from her wardrobe this morning. Forrest grins at me. “I’m ready when you are,” they say. We walk to a nearby cafe, Forrest taking decisive strides at great speed, before settling in with a cold brew. Soon, they will begin rehearsals on the reprisal of Prima Facie, Suzie Miller’s acclaimed Australian play, in which one performer plays 26 people involved in a sexual assault trial: victim, witness, prosecutor, defence, judge and jury. It is, Forrest says, the role of a lifetime.
Since it was first staged in 2019 at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre, Prima Facie has become a galvanising global sensation. The 2022 West End and Broadway production, featuring Jodie Comer in the lead role, won a clutch of Tony and Olivier awards and a film adaptation will see Cynthia Erivo step into the court robes of Tessa, a sharp-edged defence lawyer whose black-and-white view of justice is pierced when she becomes the victim of a sexual assault. Forrest first embraced the herculean undertaking of Prima Facie last year, for a production by Perth’s Black Swan State Theatre Company, where they made their professional stage debut in 2017. This month, it will transfer to Sydney’s Carriageworks, with Forrest returning after a year “to slow cook on the script”, as they describe it. “The first-ever production of the play was of an unknown story, but now the bar is super-high,” admits Miller. Prima Facie has also turned the playwright into a star in her own right. In 2024, Miller gave an address on sexual assault to the UN and her latest work Inter Alia, starring Rosamund Pike, will open on London’s West End this month.
When Forrest first auditioned for Prima Facie last year, they had only recently “come out of the gender closet”, as they put it. “My casting fell off a cliff,” says Forrest. “I’d always been cast as a pretty blonde girl in a period piece.” Roles included ones in the 70s-era television series Love Child and Barons. After they came out as nonbinary, those projects disappeared. Then they heard about Black Swan director Kate Champion’s search for a West Australian actor to star in Prima Facie. “My first tape, I had a bleached buzz cut,” they say, with a grin. “My first callback, I had maybe half that [grown out]. And then my final callback, I had a hot-pink pixie cut. I was like, yeah, I really look like the professional lawyer.” But Forrest remembers feeling “so free” telling Tessa’s story, which begins when she is a bright, bolshie defence counsel and ends with her taking her own sexual assault case through the torturous Australian legal system, with sobering results. Tessa is “the most powerful and resilient character I’ve ever met”, says Forrest, and an opportunity to test their acting muscles in ways they hadn’t been tested before, at a time in their life when they had made bold steps towards self-acceptance. “My mental health kicked me out of the closet,” they say. “You can’t keep living your life as a lie. You need to be authentic. And the best role of my career came after that.”
When they found out they had been cast, Forrest went out for dinner with their wife and ordered champagne. “‘We’re celebrating,’” they told the waiter. “And then we were just mute. ’Cause I was literally like, oh my god.” The sheer physical challenge of the role sunk in: 100 minutes on stage without interval, 95 pages of dialogue, and only one actor to deliver it. When Sarah Snook began The Picture of Dorian Gray, another Australian one-actor production turned international stage sensation, she quit caffeine and stopped drinking alcohol. Forrest pointedly glances down at their stiff cold brew. “I’m definitely not giving up coffee, that’s crazy,” they say, laughing. “I’ll try and cut down on alcohol. But I found after a long day of rehearsal, martinis got me through the last season.” They recently read an interview with Snook where she shared that she learned her lines while walking on a treadmill. “The Eras Tour Taylor Swift method,” Forrest notes, sagely. “I was like, great call. The next day, I went and did just act one on the treadmill and I was like, jesus, this sucks!” (They would love to see Snook on Broadway, they add, “but I wouldn’t feel safe travelling to the US right now as an openly queer person”.)
The physical element is one thing, but the emotional toll is another. Prima Facie is dedicated to the one in three women globally who have been victims of sexual violence, according to the WHO. And to those people who – against all overwhelming odds – report their assaults and take those cases to court, as Tessa does in Prima Facie. In New South Wales, fewer than 10 per cent of sexual assaults reported to the police end in a conviction. “Our system is completely broken,” declares Forrest. “Actually, it’s not broken. It’s built to protect perpetrators. Because they have typically been men in positions of power.” The genius of Prima Facie is that it begins from Tessa’s perspective on the other side of the witness box, defending perpetrators in the name of due process. Later, when she is being cross-examined and her credibility shredded before her eyes, she tells the audience: “I can feel a terrible wrong being done to me right now.” Speaking those words night after night, after seeing how Brittany Higgins was treated when her rape allegations were made, took on greater meaning for Forrest. “The terrible wrong on a national level that Brittany was put through,” they say, heartfelt. “It’s horrendous.”
Because of this material, it was not uncommon during the Black Swan run for audience members to need to leave quickly, mid-show. (The same thing happened in the West End, Miller counselled Forrest. “She said it was really hard for Jodie.”) Carriageworks is supporting the revival with trigger warnings and trauma training for staff, as well as a partnership with Teach Us Consent, the organisation founded by Chanel Contos that advocates for mandatory consent education in schools. “When we talk about consent and break through the barriers of toxic masculinity and porn that have created a sense of entitlement that lead to sexual assault, we can help people connect. It’s a lack of empathy that we’re seeing,” explains Forrest. “Damien, the perpetrator in Prima Facie, it’s tempting to view him as a monster, but he’s not. He’s just an entitled boy whose own self-gratification outweighed Tessa’s humanity.” Could Jacob Elordi play Damien in the film adaptation, given he was spotted with a copy of Miller’s Prima Facie novelisation at Sydney airport? “He would make a great Damien,” Forrest muses, before bristling. “It’s crazy how many people say, ‘Oh they made a play about the novel!’”
When Forrest was at school in Perth, sex education consisted of the briefest of postscripts. “It was pretty much how to use a condom,” they recall. “And then before we [left school], we were all taken into an auditorium and told how to avoid getting raped: don’t drink too much, look for escape windows, travel in pairs, if you really need to, say you need to take your tampon out to go to the bathroom. All these different, extreme escape scenarios.” They asked their male friends afterwards if they had been given the same information and received a resounding no. “It made me so mad,” Forrest says, eyes flinty. During the Black Swan run, Forrest found herself “spiralling” in the face of the endless violence-against-women epidemic in Australia. Their sister Grace advised them: “Action is the cure to despair.” So they reached out to Perth school principals – “especially the private schools” – offering student leadership free tickets to the show, at Forrest’s own expense. “Not one of them responded to me,” Forrest shares. “It was so disheartening to see such active disengagement.” But they are not despondent; action is the cure to despair. They proudly report that 10 supreme court judges came to see the show at Black Swan and for the Carriageworks run, Forrest is targeting universities and politicians. “Women are dying, and we need greater support for our frontline services.”
Talking to Forrest is to be prepared at all times for the force of their convictions. It is what makes them so suited to the role of Tessa. “Sof brings their own unique lived experience of gender and modern Australia with courage and vulnerability – and Prima Facie needs that courage,” Miller reflects.
“I have been told many times that Tessa is a character that gets under people’s skin, yet I watched Sof run towards Tessa with passion and verve, embody her and take her to audiences night after night.”
Acting began for Forrest as a child, when they put on skits with their sister. “It’s always been such a joyful, creative thing.” Forrest never lost this passion, but when they came out as nonbinary, their UK management dropped them unceremoniously. “‘I’m sorry. We can’t remake the wheel,’” they remember being told. “And then you’ll speak to other people and they’ll be like, ‘Oh it’s not like that. Surely you being nonbinary is an advantage in casting.’” Forrest fixes me with a look. “I’m like, name some nonbinary actors other than [House of the Dragon’s] Emma D’arcy.” Or Australia’s own Liv Hewson, of Yellowjackets fame. “They’ve been such an inspiration for me,” Forrest shares. “And, from The Last of Us, Bella Ramsey. I can’t imagine having that kind of self-awareness and acceptance and intelligence at that age. It took me 24 years to realise I was gay, and 28 to figure out what my gender was and how to feel comfortable with my body.”
When Forrest was younger, they always protested they would never get married. “That’s just because I didn’t like men,” Forrest says, happily. “And then I realised, oh, I can marry a woman!” Reader, Forrest married her. “Best day of my life,” they say, beaming, of their wedding in August last year. “Zara’s the best human I’ve ever met. I’m just so grateful to be with her. She’s been so supportive of me and my journey and I’m really excited for what comes next for us.” Forrest juggles acting work with part-time interior art curation; they will be taking leave from their day job for the duration of the Carriageworks run. They have ideas for a children’s book, and would love to write a script someday. “But not everyone’s a Phoebe Waller-Bridge,” Forrest laughs. “I don’t have a Fleabag up my sleeve.” The dream, though, would be for the creative landscape to catch up to Forrest’s own boundless self-actualisation. “I’m hopeful that there will be more roles I can identify with,” they reflect. “I’m so proud to have been born a woman and to tell Tessa’s story, who is a cisgender heterosexual woman. I really resonate and have lived experience with what she goes through in the story. But I feel a sense of freedom in who I am now that I’m excited to take on a multitude of characters, if I get the opportunity.”
Prima Facie is at Sydney’s Carriageworks until July 12.
Vogue Australia’s July issue is on sale Monday, July 7.
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