Sonia Friedman


Sonia Anne Primrose Friedman is a British West End and Broadway theatre producer. On 27 January 2017 Friedman was named Producer of the Year for the third year running at The Stage Awards, becoming the first person to win the award three times. In 2018, Friedman was featured in TIME100, Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2018 and was named Broadway Briefing's Show Person of the Year. In 2019, Sonia Friedman Productions ranked The Stage's most influential theatre producer in The Stage 100 2019.

Early life

Friedman is the youngest daughter of Clair Llewelyn Friedman, a concert pianist, and the eminent Russian violinist Leonard Friedman, who was leader of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Thomas Beecham and co-founder of many national institutions including the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Scottish Baroque Ensemble. Her father is from a Russian Jewish immigrant family and her mother is English.
Friedman was educated at several schools including St Christopher School, Letchworth, Hertfordshire, and trained as a stage manager at the Central School of Speech and Drama. It was after organising a couple of benefits for World Aids Day during the late 1980s that she decided to follow a career as a theatre producer.

Career

Theatre producer

After working at the National Theatre between 1988 and 1993, she co-founded the new writing theatre company Out of Joint in 1993 with Max Stafford-Clark. From 1998, Friedman worked as a producer for the Ambassador Theatre Group. She launched her own theatre company, Sonia Friedman Productions, in 2002. Friedman's productions have been nominated for and won numerous Olivier, Tony and other awards. At the 2014 Olivier Awards, Sonia Friedman Productions made Olivier Awards history by winning the most awards for any producer and for winning prizes for Best New Play, Best New Musical '', Best Play Revival and Best Musical Revival.
Friedman was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to theatre.
In 2017, Friedman won producer of the year at The Stage Awards for a third year (becoming the first person to win the award three times, and was listed as no. 1 on The Stage power list, the second solo female to hold this position in the award's history and becoming the first person to top the list that wasn't a theatre owner.
SFP productions and co-productions received an unprecedented 31 nominations in the 2017 Olivier Awards – including a record-breaking 11 for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – the most nominated new play in Olivier history. The show went on to win 9 Olivier Awards – the most ever for one production.
In 2018, Friedman was awarded the Equity Services to Theatre Award at the 18th Annual WhatsOnStage Awards, and was featured in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World.

TV producer

In 2015, Sonia Friedman Productions co-produced two television dramas, the BAFTA Nominated The Dresser which aired on BBC Two and directly followed after SFP's partnership with Playground Entertainment on the six-part mini-series adaptation of Hilary Mantel's 'Wolf Hall' which also aired on BBC Two in January 2015 and won two BAFTA Television Awards in 2016.

Theatre credits

Following is a selection of the awards won by Sonia Friedman and SFP's productions or co-productions.

https://officiallondontheatre.com/olivier-awards/winners/ Olivier Awards

She is the younger sister of director/actress/singer Maria Friedman, violinist Richard Friedman and Dr Sarah Beecham. Her younger brother, Ben, is a television director. Sonia lives with the writer Joe Murphy in their East End pub and they have two dogs.