IN Rare FORM

BILLIE PIPER MAKES THE LEAP TO DIRECTOR WITH RARE BEASTS, A KNOTTY LOVE STORY THAT DEALS WITH THE COMPLEXITIES OF MODERN FEMINISM. TOTAL FILM TALKS TO THE MULTIHYPHENATE ABOUT CRISES, ROMCOMS AND WHO SHOULD BE THE NEXT DOCTOR WHO.

Billie Piper hasn’t been feeling very well. She’s asked for the video to be turned off for our Zoom chat. “There’s a freedom in not having to see each other!” she tells Total Film with delight. It’s hard to begrudge her a quiet moment where she doesn’t have to be on screen for once, especially as we’re here to talk about her directorial debut. As well as taking control behind the camera, she also wrote and played the lead in Rare Beasts. It was an all-consuming experience, not least because she was heavily pregnant during the shoot.

“Starring in the film was an oversight,” sighs the 38-year-old Brit, regret creeping in as she chats from her home in Dorset. “I wouldn’t do it again. You have to jump around in your mind too much. It meant that I could never really be present in the directing of people – I was just pulled in too many places. It would have been nice to direct someone else in this role.”

Piper plays Mandy, a cynical single mum struggling to keep her head above water as she juggles a stressful job at a production company, a son (Toby Woolf) with behavioural difficulties and her bickering parents (Kerry Fox and David

Thewlis). In the middle of all this, she starts dating Pete (Leo Bill), her cocky, abrasive and, at times, downright misogynist colleague. Their dates are punctuated by cruel jibes, vomit and tantrums. Yet, she finds him strangely irresistible.

It’s an ambitious debut from someone who has emerged from mainstream pop success as a teenager (the youngest artist to shoot straight to number one in the UK with ‘Because We Want To’ aged 15) to become a household name after appearing as Rose Tyler on Doctor Who opposite Christopher Eccleston, in the Russell T. Davies revival that made the sci-fi stalwart relevant again.

Since then, Piper’s gravitated towards playing women fearlessly forging their own path in life. She’s starred as a high-class escort in Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, the vengeful Bride of Frankenstein in Penny Dreadful and a celebrity dealing with a nude photo scandal in I Hate Suzie. The actor has been a magnetic presence in films like Two For Joy, City Of Tiny Lights and Eternal Beauty, while her acclaimed turn in the Young Vic’s production of Yerma won her an Olivier Award.

Piper started thinking about the idea for Rare Beasts in her late twenties as she looked around and saw how her friends were falling apart as they tried to cope with the expectations of modern feminism. Everyone, including herself, was struggling. “It was born out of a period of time in my life where I felt like the cultural messaging was, as a woman, you can have it all and everything will be great,” she says. “All I could see was [this] common female crisis because of this quest to do it all.”

But it’s not just something that has impacted women. Piper is fascinated by how gender equality has upended relationships. “I was really keen to examine what it feels like to be the guinea-pig generation of modern love. Our parents had very traditional relationships – there was something quite simple about it. Trying to be that generation that tries out a new way... People are really struggling to make that work.”

It wasn’t a conscious decision to move into directing, but Piper could see every frame of Rare Beasts so clearly in her mind, she felt like she had no other choice. “I had a story that I wanted to write and then it began to seem strange that I wouldn’t then direct it. I had such a strong instinct for what it should ultimately feel like.” Having grown up on TV and film sets (one of her earliest roles was an extra in Evita) helped too. “I’ve studied film my entire life. Not at film school, but I’m a huge film fanatic so it felt like an obvious move for me.”

Piper was pregnant with her third child while filming, which meant that she had to use a body double for certain scenes and shoot mainly from the neck up. “It was exhausting,” she admits. “But thankfully I was in the middle part of my pregnancy, which I’ve always found to be the most creative time ever. It’s the very beginning and the end of pregnancy that I find my brain and my body goes to mush.”

She describes Rare Beasts as an “anti-romcom” about “human dysfunction” that tries to make sense of how brutal dating has become. “It’s really hard to navigate. People are pulling apart from each other, and are being quite uncompromising about who they are. I feel like it’s a minefield. People are scared. I want to talk honestly about that.”

There’s something that Piper wants to make absolutely clear though. “It isn’t a guide to modern love at all! If anything, it’s the opposite,” she laughs. The savage comedy is not so much a battle cry as it is a distress flare piercing the

night sky to deperately seek out others for reassurance. “I guess what I’m saying is – are you finding it hard too? It’s more of a question, you know?”

Piper has nothing against romcoms personally. In fact, she wouldn’t mind acting in one so she can escape briefly into the fantasy and fluff of an idealised life. “I love Richard Curtis films, even though I don’t make Richard Curtis-style films,” she enthuses. “I long to be in one, long to live in one because it is romantically aspirational. Those are the only ones I can really handle.”

Instead, the actor was influenced by a more eclectic and much less cosy mix of filmmakers, who have never been afraid to challenge their audience. “Paul Thomas Anderson is a big one,” she says. “Busby Berkeley, mid-period Woody Allen, [Martin] Scorsese. It’s not just directors who have inspired me, it’s choreographers as well. When I think about the films that I watched as a kid and how that’s positively affected my work, a lot of that is based in dance and musicals. There was a lot of fusing Pina Bausch imagery.”

Rare Beasts is deliberately unsettling. Piper’s characters are flawed and difficult – a knotty tangle of neuroses and insecurities. She’s glad that it’s finally becoming more acceptable to portray women like Mandy, who don’t have to be nice and can be unapologetically messy.

“There’s a relief in seeing women on screen who truly represent every facet of a woman,” she says. “Even though they may not be immediately likeable, hopefully there are things that women can relate to. That they can feel like they recognise the women in the stories they watch.

“It’s important that we’re not constantly making women likeable all the time and making them one-dimensional, shiny extensions of the man. Or really strong or really bold. We are those things, but we’re also other things. It’s a much better time to really explore those sides to women that have been ignored or misrepresented in the past.”

Along with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Lena Dunham and Michaela Coel, Piper has led the way in this recent on-screen revolution of complicated women who are not always sympathetic. Her astonishing performance in I Hate Suzie as Suzie Pickles, a former child star trying to keep it together as her life implodes, is testament to that. It’s one of the roles she’s proudest of on an already sparkling acting CV. “She always does the wrong thing and it’s so fun playing that. I’ve done that a lot in my life. I’ve made some really questionable choices, and that feels very real.”

Piper created the show with friend Lucy Prebble, who she worked with on Secret Diary Of A Call Girl. Prebble, a writer on Succession, gave Piper a guiding hand as script advisor on Rare Beasts. The pair are due to start writing the second series of

I Hate Suzie at the end of the year but Piper isn’t giving anything away about where they’ll take her journey. “We haven’t worked it out yet. We think we’ve got a good idea,” she says tentatively. “It’s taken us a while to get there.”

One programme she definitely won’t be going back to is Doctor Who. Piper played the Time Lord’s loyal companion in the 2005 revival of the BBC show. She has reprised her role several times since leaving in 2006, but ruled out an official return. “I couldn’t. [It’s] so much work! It’s the face of a family show and that’s a lot of responsibility that I’m not comfortable with.”

With speculation swirling that Jodie Whittaker, who made history as the first woman ever to play the Doctor, will be quitting after the upcoming series, who does Piper think should replace her? She pauses for a second before suddenly perking up. “Oh, I know who! Helena Bonham Carter. She’s just got that madcap energy. She’s a ruddy powerhouse.”

For now, Piper is keen to continue working with people who inspire her. She’s rumoured to be starring in Dunham’s film adaptation of Catherine, Called Birdy – a medieval coming-of-age comedy – alongside Bella Ramsey and Andrew Scott. Given the work the Girls creator and Piper have both done in pushing for more authenticity when it comes to how women are depicted on screen, this sounds like a dream collaboration. But the actor is keeping quiet. “I can’t talk about it!”

Piper is happy though to share how much she’d love to direct again. “I would, 100 per cent!” she says, full of excitement. “But it’s got to be something that I’m passionate about. It’s not about quantity. It’s about finding the right story.” She’s more than ready to give it another go – just don’t expect her to act in it as well.

RARE BEASTS IS SCHEDULED TO OPEN IN CINEMAS ON 21 MAY.

‘I WAS REALLY KEEN TO EXAMINE WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE THE GUINEA PIG GENERATION OF MODERN LOVE… PEOPLE ARE REALLY STRUGGLING TO MAKE THAT WORK’ Billie Piper