Billie Piper on teen fame, therapy and toxic masculinity

“I need to take these Spanx off and chill the f*** out.” Billie Piper is in the lift at The Emory hotel in London, calculating her next move. The past half an hour has been a whirlwind: a high-speed photoshoot that saw her lying on the floor of the hotel’s Rooftop Bar and throwing shapes in the cigar room to the anxiety-spiking beat of 2 Unlimited’s techno-pop 1990s hit No Limit (“What a song!”). She handled it like a pro. But it’s been a long day: starting at 5am and racing non-stop between back-to-back radio interviews, photoshoots and social media obligations. Such is the punishing promo schedule when the world is about to watch you in one of Netflix’s most popular franchises.

“It reminded me of an old pop day,” she says, now de-Spanxed and curled up in a plush dressing gown in the hotel suite that’s been temporarily transformed into her dressing room. Those pop days now seem a lifetime away — even though she still holds the record for the youngest singer to debut at No 1 on the UK singles chart with her 1998 hit Because We Want To at 15.

Becoming famous young is rolling the dice. It can be fatal

Billie Piper

She’s 42 now, and the British public is more familiar with Piper the actor, from her early-2000s Doctor Who breakout to the more creatively ambitious roles she’s taken on over the past decade: Collateral, I Hate Suzie and last year’s Scoop, a dramatisation of how Emily Maitlis secured that infamous Prince Andrew interview. All impressive, critically acclaimed, headline-making projects, the kind that cemented Piper as not only a gifted actor, but someone with an eye for a good story, able to bring complex characters to life with empathy and edge.

Billie Piper at The Emory’s Rooftop Bar (Sarah Brick)

But the scale of her latest project is a different kind of big. Having joined series two of Wednesday — a show that shattered streaming records when it first dropped in 2022 — Piper is now in the eye of Hollywood proper. Global premieres, hardcore fandoms, otherworldly sets captained by cinema’s prince of darkness, Tim Burton. Yes, Piper’s been in the game for a long time — respected and decorated with multiple Bafta nominations and an Olivier win for her devastating turn in 2016’s Yerma at the Young Vic. Wednesday, however, is a glossier, higher-budgeted and altogether more bewildering world to step into.

“The premieres I usually go to always feel a bit more boutique than that,” she says, recalling last night’s London launch, which saw Westminster overtaken by a purple carpet and flocks of fans clamouring to catch a glimpse of the cast, helmed by Jenna Ortega. “That felt very American, very splashy. It was fun, but it’s like an adrenaline overload.” Piper plays Isadora, Nevermore Academy’s new music teacher, who instantly sniffs out Wednesday’s flair for a dramatic cello moment. Embargoed up to her eyeballs by the powers that be, there’s not very much Piper can say about her character. But she’s completely unreserved when dishing out her reverence for the show and its creator.

Billie Piper as Isadora Capri and Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams (Jonathan Hession/Netflix)

“I was a massive Tim Burton fan when I was a kid — I was totally in awe of him and his work,” she says. Beetlejuice was on repeat in her childhood home in Swindon. And working with the man behind her childhood favourite did not disappoint. “He’s so f***ing cool — he’s got that rock star energy,” she grins. “His vision is completely unique, but he’s just like a big kid.

“He’s not pretentious, not intimidating. He’s just what you want to be around energetically.”

See also: What went down in Wednesday season one, and the questions we need answered

Piper’s always been drawn to the dark side — this much is clear in the raw chaos of I Hate Suzie, which she co-created with award-winning playwright Lucy Prebble. “Surrealism or absurdity, that’s where I feel most at home,” she says, in between mouthfuls of salt and vinegar crisps. But in work, as in life, it’s always about balancing the tension between humour, darkness and realism. “I think about it all the time, because I feel like I sort of coast between those two things — being available and public-facing, then having another personality behind the scenes. I want to be able to bring the beauty and complexities of women to the characters I play or write. Frankly, it’s just more fun, interesting and authentic.”

Billie Piper at The Emory’s Rooftop Bar (Sarah Brick)

When you’re in the public eye for nearly two- thirds of your life, you learn a few things about mediating between inner truth and outer narrative. Growing up in Swindon, young Billie was determined to become a pop star, eventually moving to London to live by herself in a hotel room while making her first records at 14. At the time, she loved it. “Because I wasn’t at school, I was being a pop star! I could stay up as late as I wanted, I could watch whatever I wanted,” she says. “But that grew isolating quite quickly.”

Now, with children of her own, she’s shocked it even happened at all. “I can’t ever imagine wanting or letting my kids go into that world at that age. Becoming famous as a young person is really rolling the dice as to how you come out of it. It can go one of two ways — and more often than not, it can be fatal.”

I felt like to be taken seriously you almost had to destroy yourself — work yourself to the bone

Billie Piper

Motherhood has shifted Piper’s relationship to her career in more ways than one. With two older sons, whose father is her ex-husband Laurence Fox (understandably, questions about exes are off limits) and a daughter with Tribes frontman Johnny Lloyd, the actor-writer-singer’s priorities have changed dramatically. Work is no longer everything —which, ironically, has actually made it easier to embrace creative mess. “Before, I felt like to be taken seriously you almost had to destroy yourself — work yourself to the bone. That was what I’d equate to success,” she says. “When I had kids, I realised that sort of perfectionism is exhausting and totally unnecessary. I’ve worked on things where I haven’t done the f***ing backstory, the playlists, the diary inserts of a character — and it’s better work. You have to rely on your instincts.”

Billie Piper at The Emory’s Rooftop Bar (Sarah Brick)

Yet parenting brings new pressures — especially in the digital age, where an unregulated internet offers easy access to the manosphere and myriad toxic ideologies. “Raising kids is terrifying,” says Piper. “It’s hard to strike the balance between keeping them away from bad forces and not making them feel like arseholes.”

Not telling a boy to be brave all the time is pretty powerful in and of itself

Billie Piper

Her five-year-old daughter, Tallulah, is too young to be online. But her sons — Winston, 15, and Eugene, 11 — are at the age where Piper is thinking carefully about how to talk to them about masculinity. “Not telling a boy to be brave all the time is pretty powerful in and of itself,” she says, thoughtfully. “Not stifling vulnerability is more powerful than people think. A lot of the problems start with shaming around being tough.” She pauses. “But yeah, we all worry sick. I don’t know a single parent who isn’t either holding their nerve or losing their shit.”

As for her own wellbeing, learning to trust herself after years in the spotlight — teenage fame, media noise around her personal life, figuring life out real-time in front of the nation — has been a long process. “I’ve done a lot of therapy in my life,” she says. “I used to be quite cynical about that because of my background — it’s just not something you do. It felt like some sort of luxury that belonged to other people — and to be frank, it sort of is, because it costs a lot of money, unless you can get it on the NHS, which is obviously really hard. In the end, I decided I would rather spend my money on that than other things that weren’t important. For me, it’s been a complete game changer.”

Billie Piper at The Emory’s Rooftop Bar (Sarah Brick)

Other lifelines: walking the dog, spending time by the sea in Dorset, where she has family. “I spent a lot of my childhood there,” she says. “The sea just feels very wild and deep in Dorset.” Piper still lives in London, but spends most of her time locally, going to nearby restaurants and pubs when in need of a night out. “God, it sounds so boring! I pick my moments to go out-out — and those don’t tend to happen in London anymore.” Case in point: Glastonbury, where she spent the majority of her time raving till the early hours in Block9, Shangri-La and the Gorilla Bar, where insiders flock for off-line-up thrills. “Banging DJ sets, friends, the sound is so good, and it’s really small and sweaty. I absolutely love it,” she says.

Talk about balance. Piper may be in the eye of a media storm that takes her back to her pop days, but her outlook is grounded and clear-headed, offsetting creative pressure with simple pleasures. Rumours still swirl. Most recently, a recent Doctor Who cameo sparked speculation she could replace Ncuti Gatwa as the 16th regeneration of the Time Lord. Piper can’t comment on all that. But what she can do is take control of the narrative she’s building for herself. “Writing brings me enormous joy,” she says, of her most essential grounding practice.

Billie Piper’s by numbers

15

The age she released her debut single

3

Number of singles that topped the chart: Because We Want To, Girlfriend and Day & Night

38

Number of episodes of Doctor Who she’s appeared in

16th

Doctor, perhaps — after the show shocked fans by showing Ncuti Gatwa regenerating into her

2

National Television Awards for Most Popular Actress

1

Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress, for her role in Yerma

Currently, she’s working on a rom-com, alongside a few other hush-hush projects. “You just go completely into the world of imagination. I used to get that from acting, but less now, because it’s so public facing. Whereas being in a room, writing alone and entering a completely different world, is so satisfying for me.”

I’m getting to a point where I’m actually quite moved by the things I did as a little kid

Billie Piper

Nearly three decades into her career, Piper’s made peace with her past and is writing the next act on her own terms. “Lamenting constantly about the trauma of child fame — it can get a bit heavy, can’t it?” she says. Time to release the cringe and embrace it. “I’m getting to a point where I’m actually quite moved by the things I did as a little kid.” And through Wednesday, she’s creating space for others to feel the same. “I really care about characters like Wednesday — or outcasts, as they call them. It’s important that kids sitting on the outskirts of what’s mainstream have that representation. I sit well in that world.”

Turns out, the mainstream never fit quite right anyway. Now, from the outside, Billie Piper sees everything more clearly.

Photography by Sarah Brick at The Emory Rooftop Bar