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APRIL 2021 Chic home updates Pastel crockery Six modern paint shades How to recycle and relove Fill every APRIL 2021 £4.99 room with wildflowers RED GREAT FOR THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE STYLE The best EVERY new beauty DAY brands CHECKED BLAZERS DENIM FLARES BIG-COLLAR BLOUSES WOODEN CLOGS ‘Happiness PLUS WHAT THE RED TEAM WEARS NOW comes CAN WE EVER when you NAIL THE WORK/FAMILY least BALANCE? expect it’ Billie Piper REDONLINE.CO.UK on chaos, courage and Finding joy JUST DO IT! 04 The secret to living 9771461 131206 spontaneously WWW.REDONLINE.CO.UK Red Woman Being illie Piper may only be 38, but she has lived a more colourful life than most. Since she entered the spotlight as a 15-year-old popstar, she has had an illustrious career in both music and acting, become a mother-of-three, been through two divorces and won so many awards that the list has its own Wikipedia page. So, I am interested to know what all these experiences have taught her about happiness. When I pose the question, Piper gazes away pensively, before meeting my eyes again and responding: ‘That it’s fleeting.’ It’s a confronting answer, but Piper isn’t interested in sugar-coating things. What she ofers is raw and unfiltered, and this extends from our interview right through to her recent work. You might associate Piper with Rose Tyler, David Tennant’s companion in BBC One’s Doctor Who, a breakout role so successful that she still has a cult following 16 years later. Or perhaps with escort Belle de Jour in 2007’s hit ITV drama Secret Diary Of A Call Girl. But lately, Piper’s been pouring her unflinching honesty into stories of her own. First came 2020’s I Hate Suzie, an eight-part drama for Sky Atlantic, which she co-created with her close friend and screenwriter Lucy Prebble. Piper played the eponymous Suzie, an actor whose life unravels at breakneck speed when intimate photos are shared online. Its storyline, Piper says, meant it proved difcult to get of the ground. ‘Not many people wanted it, because they felt they’d filled their quota for “women having a breakdown”,’ she explains, rolling her eyes as she speaks. And yet the series was met with multiple five-star reviews; her performance hailed by critics as ‘outstanding’. Next is the film Rare Beasts, a fierce anti romcom about a career-driven single mother, Mandy, whose deep desire to be in a relationship means she settles for a man (Leo Bill) who is pretty awful. Piper has written and directed the film and stars as its lead; it’s the reason for us PHOTOGRAPHY coming together over Zoom today. She’s speaking to me from her musician boyfriend Johnny CHLOE MALLETT Lloyd’s studio in the home they share; make-up free, with her bleach-blonde hair secured with a scrunchie on top of her head. When I mention how much I enjoyed the film, and that it’s the kind of story that crawls under your skin, she beams. It’s clear this project means a lot to her. Piper started writing the film seven years ago, she explains, in response to the immense pressure that surrounded her in her early 30s. ‘Something I saw happening was women struggling under the “have it all” culture, which I think is quite an unhelpful message,’ she says. ‘I saw peers and read about women having ambitions, having children, navigating relationships, navigatingB modern feminism, and it all culminating in a bit of a mental-health crisis. It was filling my ears and my mind and my spirit.’ It compelled her to start writing about Mandy, who finds herself in the arms of a volatile man because she’s crumbling under this ‘I’M REALLY JUST very stress. Cynical and a proud nihilist, Mandy, like Suzie, is part of a burgeoning landscape of messy female characters taking DRIVEN BY CURIOSITY centre-stage in provocative new shows. Piper credits fellow female creatives Michaela Coel, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Lena Dunham AND RESTLESSNESS’ for ‘setting the tone’. ‘It’s really exciting because it feels honest,’ she Billie says of this new dawn for women on screen. ‘I’ve always tried to look for that [honesty] in the work I do and I haven’t found it often.’ FROM TEEN SINGER TO SUPERSTAR ACTOR, TWO DECADES As a first-time director, Piper felt ‘creatively at home’, but she was also pregnant with her IN THE PUBLIC EYE HAVE TAUGHT BILLIE PIPER A LOT. AS SHE MAKES daughter Tallulah, now two, during filming, which I suggest must have been demanding. She shakes her head. ‘I actually think [pregnancy] made the experience easier,’ she says. ‘Everyone HER DIRECTORIAL DEBUT, ANNA BONET DISCOVERS A WOMAN had a lot of patience for me as a first-time director, but also as a pregnant woman. So I feel like WHO DOESN’T SHY AWAY FROM PAINFUL TRUTHS Tallulah was a force field for me.’ She grins, before adding, ‘Maybe when I direct something else, it won’t be like that because I won’t have the protection of being “with child”. I’ll realise STYLING ALISHA MOTION CALZEDONIA. TIGHTS, PIPER WEARS: JUMPER, THE BELLA OUTNET. FREUD AT STUDIO MYTHERESA. RUA ALESSANDRA RINGS, RICH EARRINGS, AT that, actually, everyone’s a b*stard and I hate directing!’ She lets out a loud chuckle. 32 33 April 2021 | REDONLINE.CO.UK April 2021 | REDONLINE.CO.UK Red Woman Piper has certainly been bold in her choices as director: the storytelling isn’t linear, the camera movements can be dizzying and the characters are ‘end-of-the-rope versions of themselves’. ‘During the filming and even the writing – when it’s really for yourself and your friends – I had so much courage,’ she reflects. ‘I was wedded to this idea of creating a film that felt theatrical, like a big piece of choreography. So it’s immersive, it’s heightened, it feels like you yourself are experiencing that level of stress. Because in my early 30s, that’s how the world felt to me.’ More recently, though, self-doubt has been creeping in. ‘Now that it’s about to come out, I’m really nervous about having filmed it in that way.’ As an actor, Piper has ‘got over’ dealing with the reception of her work, but as a director, she’s back in what she calls the ‘please like me seat’. That’s only natural, I reason. ‘I do think you’re right,’ she muses. ‘Also, maybe it’s the reason why I like to vary the work and move around the industry. Because that beginning feeling is so unbelievably thrilling.’ ‘Move around’ she certainly has. Before making the transition to screenwriter-director, Piper’s career had already gone through several iterations: from popstar to sci-fi heroine to stage sensation, the latter seeing her scoop all six of the Best Actress awards currently available in UK theatre for her performance in the 2017 production of Yerma at the Young Vic Theatre. ‘That really changed everything for me,’ she remembers. Irrespective of her success, mixing things up is something Piper says she has always felt like she has had to do for herself. ‘I’m really just driven by curiosity, and a sense of ‘I DON’T KNOW restlessness,’ she says, though she admits it hasn’t always been easy. ‘I have met a struggle at every point when I have IF I CAN BE HEALTHY deviated professionally. And maybe on some level, I am addicted to that. Maybe I am attracted to that feeling of not AROUND LOVE’ being wanted, and then proving myself. There is a whole messed up thing going on in there.’ I laugh, but I suspect Piper’s drive has played a large part in carrying her through, too. Born in Swindon, her father was a builder, while her mother stayed home to look after Piper and her three younger siblings. It came as little surprise to them when their ‘freakishly ambitious’ child won a scholarship to the Sylvia Young Theatre School in London; the school’s former alumni also includes Keeley Hawes, Amy Winehouse and Emma Bunton. Before long, Piper had appeared blowing bubble gum in a now-famous 1990s TV ad for Smash Hits magazine, which led to her being spotted and signed by a record label. By 14, she was living alone in a flat in London, while pursuing a career in music. Was she ever frightened, I wonder, living alone at such a young age? ‘No, I loved it,’ Piper enthuses. ‘Now, I feel so sorry for my 14-year-old self, but I remember at the time really enjoying that freedom.’ When her first single, the feelgood girl power anthem Because We Want To, was released in 1998, she became the youngest female artist (at 15) to enter at number one on the UK Singles Chart. Numerous top-five singles followed, as well as two double-platinum albums and four Smash Hits Awards, but Piper is all too aware that success at such a young age comes at a price. She has spoken openly in the past about her ensuing struggles with an eating disorder and contemplating taking her own life when she was 16, and she alludes to this now: ‘I’m alive to the fact it could have gone one of two ways, and almost did for a short time.’ I am curious as to how she feels that early experience shaped who she is today.