TOP OF THE BILL
How Billie Piper went from Secret Diary of a Call Girl star to 2024 Scoop fame in stellar performance as Sam McAlister
But despite her success, the former teen pop star confessed she still suffers from 'imposter syndrome'
Billie Piper has been one of Britain’s most famous faces since the Nineties, hitting number one with debut single Because We Want To when she was just 15.
Now her leading role in Netflix drama Scoop - where she portrays the tenacious Newsnight booker who secured Prince Andrew’s car crash interview about his friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein - looks set to make her an international star.
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It's a huge scoop for this working class girl from Swindon, who once feared her career as a 'serious' actress might be sabotaged by her time spent as the hot and steamy lead in Secret Diary of a Call Girl.
Some scenes were so embarrassing, she used a body double and once told Heat magazine that an encounter where she had to make animal noises left her "feeling a bit sordid and a bit wrong."
But now she says her only worry is “that they’re just always there". "I’m glad I’m out of my sex scene years. I really don’t want to do them any more,” she adds.
In her new film, Billie has truly shaken off the shackles of that role, with her brilliant take on real life journalist Sam McAlister, who pulls off the coup interview.
The cast is stellar, with Gillian Anderson as Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis, Rufus Sewell transformed with prosthetics into ‘Randy Andy’ and Keeley Hawes as his press secretary Amanda Thirsk.
Not just a flash in the pan
But Billie, 41, doesn’t always feel as confident as she appears on screen, admitting: “I think until about nine years ago, I always felt I had imposter syndrome around my acting.
“Before that, when I was a singer, that’s all I experienced. I felt like such a charlatan in that industry because it wasn’t my first love and… it wasn’t my gift.
“I think the best way to combat it… I think the more you start to show love and care to yourself, those feelings of being an imposter or a charlatan or less than or a fake, I think they start to lessen.
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“But I also wonder if that’s in combination with age, where there’s enough historical evidence to show that you have done something well, and it isn’t just a flash in the pan.”
Billie was born to a builder father and stay-at-home mum in Swindon, Wiltshire, but her passion for drama led to her winning a place at the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School in London when she was 12.
Billie Piper, 41, wows in striped suit on red carpet at premiere of Scoop
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The eldest of four, she boarded with relatives while attending classes alongside the late singer Amy Winehouse and Hollyoaks alumni Jodi Albert.
Her dream was to act full time and it was only by chance that she found fame in the music industry.
Billie told the Table Manners podcast recently: “When you join drama school, you join an agency and you start auditioning for things. I auditioned to be the face of the relaunched Smash Hits.
“I did lots of promotional things like the adverts and the art work, and I was on the cover of Music Week as a model – which landed on the desk of Hugh Goldsmith of Virgin’s sister label, Innocent.
“My parents were in awe of it but I was such a pushy, precocious child that I really wanted it and they didn’t want to stand in my way."
“He wanted to sign a young female soloist and he saw it and said: ‘Let’s try her out’.”
The schoolgirl was asked to do a demo and within months had left school to start her career.
She says: “I don’t regret it but I think I could have waited a bit longer to get into it… I don’t think success and teenage years are a good marriage.
“My parents were in awe of it but I was such a pushy, precocious child that I really wanted it and they didn’t want to stand in my way.
"My dad also wanted me to have a life they never had. He was builder and my mum was a housewife.”
Sudden fame was a lot for the teenager to manage and she burnt out, saying: "I've never worked as hard in my life as I did when I was a kid. It was lawless... and I'm still in debt to Virgin [because of the cost of video shoots]."
In the midst of the attention, she had a whirlwind romance with radio presenter Chris Evans, who was 17 years her senior.
The pair married in May 2001, when Billie was just 18, but the relationship last six years and they remain friends decades after their 2007 divorce.
I’m glad I’m out of my sex scene years. I really don’t want to do them any more."
Scoop star Billie Piper
Billie dipped her toe back into acting with a small role in BBC adaptation The Canterbury Tales in 2003, before winning the part of Time Lord companion Rose Tyler in Doctor Who two years later.
Her on-screen partnership with Christopher Eccleston won her legions of fans of all ages – so her next major project was a shock.
Billie played high class escort Belle du Jour in Secret Diary of a Call Girl, the real-life memoir by scientist Brooke Magnanti.
Over the four series, we saw the star as never before, quite literally, due to copious nudity and sex scenes.
She also came under fire for glamorising prostitution and later said the “execution” of the adaptation wasn’t as strong as she had hoped.
But Billie has continued to push boundaries with her work, appearing in Sam Mendes-directed Penny Dreadful, BBC detective drama Collateral with Carey Mulligan and Lena Dunham’s Catherine Called Birdy.
The soundtrack to Dunham's show included Billie's old pop hit Honey to the B, which the Girls writer had heard on a trip to Britain as a girl.
Billie also won plaudits for her stage work, taking the 2016 adaptation of Yerma to Broadway and picking up an Olivier Award.
I hate Suzie
In 2019, she wrote and directed psychological drama Rare Beasts, which also stars Lily James and David Thewlis.
It tells the story of Mandy, a career-driven nihilistic single mother with a deeply disturbed son, who falls for a rage-filled man called Pete.
This was followed by semi-autobiographical TV comedy-drama I Hate Suzie, about a former child star whose life is thrown into turmoil when her phone is hacked.
The show was a collaboration with writer Lucy Preeble, who also adapted Secret Diary of a Call Girl for ITV, and received critical acclaim after debuting on Sky Atlantic in August 2020, leading to a second season called I Hate Suzie Too.
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Billie has sons Winston, 15, and Eugene, 12, with her ex-second husband Laurence Fox, and a daughter Tallulah, five, with former boyfriend Johnny Lloyd.
While she is fiercely ambitious, she admits she hates how her chosen career gives her no work-life balance and she can't always be around for her kids.
"Working mothers’ stuff is really complex," she says. "I feel like we’ve been told we should have that [work-life balance]. But there’s absolutely no way I have that.
"That’s one of the tiring things about being an actor for hire. if you’re working in a lead role, you’re out of the house sometimes 15 hours a day. I really struggle with that now I’ve got three kids.
"When you’re gone, you’re gone. Those extremes make for something quite rocky."
She even turned down the prestigious part of Sally Bowles in the West End production of Cabaret in part because of this.
"I love that play and it's a dream role for any actress but musical theatre is such hard work, it's exhausting," she says.
"And I don't like to have to take care of myself that well all the time. You have to really manage your voice and never go out. My voice isn't strong enough to handle that.
"I would have loved it. But I find theatre hard when you have a family. You don't get to put them to bed and you don't have Saturdays with them."
What is the new Netflix film Scoop about?
Scoop tells the inside story of how BBC Newsnight secured its infamous interview with Prince Andrew in 2019.
The film is based on the book Scoops by former show booker Sam McAlister, a barrister turned journalist who felt out of place at the show due to her background as a working class single mum.
Sam managed to woo the royal's press secretary, Amanda Thirsk, securing a face-to-face meeting with the Duke of York and his eldest daughter, Prince Beatrice.
He is talked into the exclusive, no holds barred interview about his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his British girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, as a way of trying to set the record straight and improving his public image.
But the one-hour grilling by presenter Emily Maitlis - played by Gillian Anderson - turns into car crash television when he gives unrelatable and bizarre answers about not sweating and hosting a shooting weekend.
The fallout would lead his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, to ask him to step back from frontline duties, while the BBC won two gongs at the 2020 RTS Television Journalism Awards.
For Scoop, Billie plays real life journalist and unsung hero Sam McAlister, a fellow single mum who rises from a working class background to be at the top of her game at BBC News.
She met Sam, whose book Scoops the film was based on, several times before filming and saw many parallels between them.
“We have very similar backgrounds. Spent a great deal of time around middle-class professionals. Had to find a way to be taken seriously in amongst all of that,” she told The Independent.
“We have these sort of uncompromising parts of our personality.
“It was so fun to play her. She’s this unsung hero but on top of all that incredible work and effort, she’s also this formidable character.
“I care about this incredible story, I care about telling it but I also love playing her.
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“She’s relentlessly optimistic and when you meet people like that, you feel changed by them, because they are rare.
“There’s nothing chilly about her, she is 100 per cent warmth. I think that’s what clinched the deal.”
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