Billie Piper on the Prince Andrew scandal: ‘Any abuse of power and abuse of innocence just makes me feel sick and furious’
I think Billie Piper is being polite when I ask how she feels about journalists. “Very mixed, obviously,” the I Hate Suzie star replies, diplomatically. “There’s loads of it that I really support. And then there’s some of it that I obviously hate. Because I’ve been on the receiving end of that.”
Yes. From the age of 15, she was trailed and tormented by tabloids; these days her name gets dragged in whenever her ex-husband Laurence Fox makes a bold new stand in the name of free speech. So I was surprised that her latest project, Scoop – Netflix’s star-studded film about Newsnight’s quest to land its now infamous Prince Andrew interview – is something of a love letter to journalism. We were the last sort I’d have thought she’d want to big up, but she’s found that our profession isn’t so different from her own.
“[Journalism is] such a dog-eat-dog world, and you see when you watch the film: even though they make this thing happen together, it’s not without tricky dynamics, and sort of stabbing each other in the back to get the thing. I mean, I can relate in a way – on some level, that’s sort of what acting feels like.”
I’m nodding, nodding, thinking of all the colleagues I mortally wounded so I could talk to Piper, the teen pop queen of my early adolescence, whom I watched transform into one of the best actors working in Britain today... Wait, hang on – who has she stabbed in the back? “A number of people!” she jokes through a giant laugh. Then she’s serious, quiet, considered. “I don’t know if I’ve stabbed anyone in the back. But I’ve definitely seen it become a blood sport, I suppose is what I’m trying to say.”
Piper, now 41, has led a
