INTERVIEW GRAZIA
Billie Piper knows a thing or two about navig ating the hig hs and lows of fame. She tells Paul Flynn what she’s learned
IT IS NOW AN astonishing 26 years since Billie Piper first appeared in public life, a teen-pop icon who, at 15, became the youngest debut British number-one singer in chart history. There is an affectionate corner of British culture that will be forever Piper’s. Whenever she smiles her big gobstopper smile it feels as familiar and recognisable as a close family member’s.
Today, she’s here to talk about Scoop, the forthcoming Netflix dramatisation of the Prince Andrew Newsnight 2019 inter view fiasco, in which, should you need reminding , the eighth in line to the throne addressed his involvement with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein while being grilled by Emily Maitlis. ‘It’s not necessarily about Epstein,’ Piper clarifies. ‘It’s about the women who brought this moment to our screens and how fucking amazing they are.’
Piper stars as Sam McAlister, the former Newsnight inter view booker who engineered one of the most toe-curling embodiments of bad PR in living memory. ‘ What we saw is the car crash,’ she notes. ‘We never saw the journey to the car crash. And that’s what this is. It’s the moment-to -moment of how we got to this thing.’
Scoop will be another mass market moment for Piper in a career littered with them. ‘I obviously really loved the music days and the Doctor Who days,’ she says.
‘But I feel like I’m most myself in my work now… I feel like I can be honest about who I am, what I feel, what I imagine, what kind of artistic person I am. I don’t want to hide that stuff.’
This was not always the case. ‘So much of my childhood famous years and then into Doctor Who was… be good, behave well, be a good role model, don’t say dark things, be sunny, don’t smoke, all that stuff.’ This was never who she was. ‘It didn’t align with where my thoughts were. My thoughts were way darker than that.’ She thought recently about picking up the Britney Spears autobiography. ‘But I couldn’t.’ All that “be a good person” stuff was just a way of saying , “Don’t be human.”’ She picks up. ‘ There was a lot of “be a good girl”, particularly, that I really fucking struggled with.’
For Piper, part of the appeal of Scoop was the Netflix factor. ‘I feel like it will get a lot of heat because of the subject matter,’ she says. ‘And because of Netflix’s huge reach. It’s nice to be on a show that people will watch.’ Prior to filming Scoop, at the start of 2023, Piper had been on an intense schedul
