Justin Martin on the 'thrilling experience' of directing Rosamund Pike in ‘Inter Alia’

Martin oversees the Gone Girl Oscar nominee’s Broadway debut three years after he guided Jodie Comer to a Tony Award in writer Suzie Miller’s last New York play, Prima Facie.

Summary

• Director Justin Martin and actor Rosamund Pike discuss working on Suzie Miller's Inter Alia on Broadway and in London
• Pike makes her Broadway debut as conflicted judge and mother Jessica Parks after winning an Olivier Award for the role
• The pair discuss the importance of physicality and music to the show and the ways in which Pike resonates with her character

Here comes the judge. Gone Girl Oscar nominee Rosamund Pike makes her Broadway debut in Suzie Miller’s Inter Alia as an English wife and mother in that vaunted profession. But she’ll do much more than bang a gavel in the drama beginning November 10 at the Music Box Theatre.

Reprising her role as Jessica Parks, for which she won a Best Actress Olivier Award in April, Pike is almost perennially in motion. Jessica presides, cooks, irons, mothers, argues, and more. She's a major multitasker.

“I like to keep actors busy,” said the play’s director, Justin Martin, who staged the July 2025 world premiere at the National Theatre in London that transferred eight months later to the West End. “Rosamund’s performance is a proper workout.”

Pike concurred. “The role is extremely physical. I don't leave the stage for an hour and 40 minutes, but it's exciting,” she said, adding that the physicality mirrors the mental agility Jessica's job requires. “A judge has so much in her head while remaining judicial.”

“When I first started doing [the play], it felt a bit like I was on a freeway with things speeding by in my rearview mirror,” she added. “Now, I feel I have time for the dance — time to enjoy the dance.”

The kinetic nature of the star turn is by design. “It’s the story of a mother who’s juggling totally different worlds and trying to make all that work,” said Martin, adding that his childhood alongside his brother in Australia informed his work here.

“My memory of my mother when I was a kid was that she had two boys. She was working. She was at home. She was looking after us. Dad was always at work,” he said. “This sense of juggling and doing 50 million things at once, but making it look easy, was central to the staging.”

"Inter alia" is a Latin legal phrase meaning “among other things.” The concept of multiplicity is tucked into the title of Miller’s play, which co-stars Jamie Glover as Jessica’s husband, Michael, and Cormac McAlinden as her teenage son, Harry. (They also reprise their West End roles and make their Broadway debuts.) The play explores what happens when Jessica’s professional responsibilities and personal loyalties collide as Harry is accused of sexual assault.

Inter Alia complements Miller’s Prima Facie, a solo drama that ran on Broadway in 2023 under Martin’s direction. Jodie Comer won a Best Actress Tony Award playing an English lawyer who regularly defends men accused of rape and experiences justice from the other side when she’s assaulted.

“There are similarities because both plays are in conversation with the legal themes,” said Martin. “But Inter Alia ultimately is not a story about the law. It's a story about the family.” (Miller’s next play, he told New York Theatre Guide, is set to be told from the perspective of a jury.)

“When Suzie sent the first draft of Inter Alia to me, it was a one-woman show,” said Martin. “She said, ‘I don’t want it to be that. I want it to be different.’” Through developmental workshops at the U.K.’s National Theatre Studio, the men in Jessica’s life took shape on stage, along with thematic dives into marital dynamics and the challenges of raising boys.

“We just tried out what it was like to have the son in the show, and what was it like to have the dad in the show,” said Martin, adding that Miller found the narrative inspiration she was looking for. “You know an idea is working when it just keeps bringing up more ideas.”

Music also plays an integral role in the show. Jessica is a karaoke fiend, relishing any chance to grab the microphone, wig out, and release tension. The idea emerges thanks to an insight Miller, a former human rights and children’s rights lawyer, shared with the director.

“When it came to barristers in Prima Facie, Suzie always compared them to thoroughbred horses,” said Martin. “When I asked her about judges, Suzie said, ‘They’re rock stars.’ I said, ‘I can run with that.’”

Martin had never seen Pike’s early-career stage performances, which included turns in Tennessee Willams’s Summer and Smoke in 2003 and Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler in 2010 before she became a screen star, winning an Emmy (State of the Union) and a Golden Globe (I Care a Lot). What led him to Pike?

“She’s always been on my radar since Gone Girl,” said Martin. “I had no context for her very, very wicked, brilliant sense of humor. Then I saw Saltburn. Plus, there was the fact that she has two boys, and we knew the play was about bringing up boys. I thought the play would resonate with her.”

Looking back, Pike concurred. “I'm a mother. I'm a professional. I'm working hard. I have a partner. I have elderly parents,” she said. “I'm at that point where the juggle is everything. I'm living my life inter alia — among all the other things."

When Martin and Miller first sent Pike the script, she'd said, "'Yeah, okay, let's do it,'" the director recalled. "And then she worked with us very in depth to make that show as real as possible. Putting her and Suzie together was the most thrilling experience.”

Get Inter Alia tickets now.

Gillian Russo contributed reporting for this story.

Photo credit: Inter Alia in London. (Photo by Manuel Harlan)