What It Costs to Be a Woman: Billie Piper On Her Directorial Debut

Whether you’re a theatre-loving boomer or a boxset-obsessed zoomer, chances are the work of Billie Piper has come into your life at some point.

Her varied career began in the 1990s as a teenage pop star, before becoming a beloved Doctor Who regular. Next, she won multiple theatre awards for her performance in Yerma, and also landed two BAFTA nominations for her on-screen work in Collateral and I Hate Suzie.

The latter, co-written and created by Piper, along with Lucy Prebble, was a knockout piece of TV from 2020 – topping end of year polls, along with the likes of I May Destroy You and Small Axe. Each episode focused on one of the eight stages of trauma that Piper’s character, Suzie Pickles, experiences after her phone is hacked and images leaked. Piper then takes the viewer on a potent journey of spiralling chaos and catharsis. 

Spiralling chaos is also the jumping off point for her directorial debut, Rare Beasts, which opens on the 21st of May. In it, Piper plays Mandy, a woman in crisis searching for something, who meets a man in crisis searching for something. Pitched as an anti-romcom, it throws the viewer deep into the dysfunctional lives of those on screen, and leaves us festering in all its uncomfortableness, black humour and tense conflicts.

Here, Piper discusses the film, playing unlikable characters, the pressures of modern life on women and how her thirties became a defining decade.

VICE: The film was delayed due to COVID – how are you feeling about it coming out?
Billie Piper: It’s nice to come out of this feeling like this film might actually get seen and that I hadn't imagined it. It’s weird – I was starting to feel like it hadn’t happened. Like it was a phantom film and that maybe I was completely deluded. So to see it come out and people be able to see it in cinemas is great. I want to sort of let go of it in some way as well. It's like this little toxic lover that I can't shift.

You started writing the film eight years ago, so it’s been a long time in the making. How’s your relationship to it changed?
It looks different and it feels different. When I was writing it, and in the early days of filming it, it felt like it was more of a story about a dysfunctional relationship and trying to escape your parents’ relationship. It just felt more relationship-based. Now, when I look back at it, I feel like it’s a dysfunctional relationship with herself. It’s more of a story about what it costs you to be a woman.

As a genre for this film, does dark comedy sit comfortably with you?
Oh yeah. I would say it’s even pitch black, because the people are so beastly and dark and coarse to each other. The behaviour is all in the face of rejection – like, how do you behave when you’re told no and rejected? And how have you ended up this way?

Did you take naturally to directing people?
I found that really hard, especially with the men, which is an issue of mine. Then I got into it quite quickly, because you have to. As much as directing is about something very beautifully creative, it’s also about troubleshooting a lot. Especially in independent film, when there’s no time or money and you still want to fulfil your big creative vision. In a way, it felt very similar to being a mum: lots of questions, lots of demands, lots of putting out fires. I’d be lying if I didn’t draw a similarity there.

You’ve previously said you like to seek out roles that are authentically written, at the risk of being unlikable. Is this something you’ve created for yourself here? And do you get more out of this as an actor?
Yeah, it feels truer about humanity. It’s something I always look for in roles when I’m acting, and also in the creation of I Hate Suzie and the writing of Rare Beasts. People contradict themselves so much in life, and you change, and I think people often behave quite badly and just have little good moments – that feels real to me. I don’t know if it’s true for everyone else.

I was talking to someone before this interview about whether this is a film about men versus women. I don’t know that it is, because I think both sides are examined in a way that sees women being just as complex and challenging as the men, and sometimes as hysterical and mean. I’m not sparing any punches.

Have you felt that people have got this film and understood your intentions with it?
Yeah, I think so, but I’m not sure that it's a film that you have to get. It’s not trying to teach anything, it’s not trying to draw a conclusion. It’s the opposite of all of those things. It’s like a slice of someone’s life, where there is a small change and a small decision that she makes. It feels true to life that there are little things you do that can change the course of your life. That can just be saying no to someone who has completely fucked you over. Or saying yes to yourself. There is no big lesson here.

You’ve spoken about your positive experiences of therapy. How much of what you’ve unlocked in that process has gone into this film?
My life has benefited enormously from extensive therapy. It is informing my work because it’s giving me the confidence to be honest. It’s basically someone acknowledging certain feelings I have, or have had, and giving me permission not to feel bad about them, which is encouraging me to be more honest about what it all feels like. It’s really good for finding authenticity in your life.

Are there parallels to be found in Suzie from I Hate Suzie and Mandy here?
I wrote Rare Beasts eight years ago and it’s been a long time in the making, and so happened before I Hate Suzie, but it makes absolute sense to me that there are similarities. It feels like someone trying to mine the truth at the risk of being un-liked. That will always run through my work now, unless something happens and I go back into being a puppet on a string [laughs]. 

Did you ever feel like that?
Sure. I’ve felt like that loads.

You’ve previously spoken about the pressures placed on women, and this film explores that too, but you also made this film while pregnant and wrapping up a major TV project. Do you still feel those pressures even though your work is exploring the impact they can have?
Yeah, I do. I’m basically a walking example of it. I certainly felt like that at the end of I Hate Suzie. I felt like I was talking and moaning about the thing I was also doing and playing into. It’s something that I need to try to take on-board more seriously. Instead of talking about it culturally, I need to talk about it with myself on a more personal level.

Do you have an addictive relationship to work?
I know actors who don’t stop working at all; they just jump from film to film to film. Because I’ve had kids and been married, I feel like my work has always been separated. I haven’t worked back-to-back until quite recently. I think that has come about because I’ve got a lot to say at the moment. My thirties felt really meaningful to me, and I want to share that creatively because that’s all I know what to do with those emotions. In many ways I feel quite free, and that has meant I’ve worked quite a lot. But it hasn’t felt entirely unhealthy. It’s felt like something I’ve needed to do, but now I need to get on top of it. I haven’t worked in the past to get some sort of kick or some fill. It’s not satisfying me in a sort of addict-y way. It’s just something that I ran to for diffusion. 

You say your thirties has been really meaningful to you. Why has this period been so revelatory?
I think it’s that it feels like the stakes, almost overnight, get really serious. It’s like: obviously I can’t live in a perpetual state of youth because that starts to get a bit tragic. And also, I can’t physically do that. You recognise patterns of behaviour that need looking at in your thirties that you don’t need to touch in your twenties. So you start to ask: why didn’t I hold that relationship down? Why didn’t I get that job? Why am I still fucking raging with my dad? It felt to me like a time where you have to actually start dealing with some of those things.

Otherwise, the choice is like a fork in the road, you’re going to continue down that path of destruction, abandonment, hedonism, whatever. Or you’re going to get on top of one or two things that might be really fruitful. But it’s not whimsical, it’s fucking serious, because several things financially become really important. I saw a lot of my girlfriends be like, ‘Fuck, I’ve now got to just have a kid because I don’t have the luxury of time and I haven’t got £5,000 to freeze my fucking eggs.’ Shit gets so real. And the rest of your life is coloured by this time and no one really talks about it. Everyone talks about your forties or your twenties, like your formative years, but no one talks about this period of time.

Can we expect more I Hate Suzie?
We’ve got an idea for it at the moment, which is quite exciting, and we’re going to start working on that in autumn.

‘Rare Beasts’ is in cinemas and on demand from the 21st of May.

@danieldylanwray