‘A lot is similar and quite a lot is different’: Joanna Murray-Smith on bringing ‘Switzerland’ to the big screen

Long before the Netflix series Ripley, starring Andrew Scott, Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith became intrigued with the mind behind the character, author Patricia Highsmith, after reading her biography in an LA bookstore.

Such was her interest that she wrote Switzerland, a two-hander play offering a fictionalised version of the author’s final days and her interactions with a representative from a New York publishing house that is trying to convince her to produce one more Ripley story before she p...