‘Your life could be destroyed...'

Billie Piper on playing a child star-turned-actor whose private life is made VERY public

- Victoria Wilson

Billie Piper certainly knows a thing or two about show business. Bursting on to the scene in 1998 as a fresh-faced 15-year-old with her super-catchy pop hit Because We Want To, Billie lived the teen dream before turning her attentions to acting, with characters such as plucky assistant Rose Tyler in BBC1’s Doctor Who, confident Belle in ITV2’s Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Lily Frankenstein in Sky Atlantic’s Penny Dreadful all keeping her firmly in the media spotlight.

So you could say her latest role in Sky Atlantic’s I Hate Suzie – which she co-created with Secret Diary of a Call Girl writer Lucy Prebble – is a case of art imitating life.

In the eight-part comic drama, Billie plays Suzie Pickles, a former child star-turned-actor whose world is turned upside down when her phone is hacked and compromising photos are leaked online.

With the help of her best friend and manager, Naomi (Innocent’s Leila Farzad), Suzie tries to keep her life, career and family together in the face of being exposed for who she truly is.

But does she even know the real Suzie? And will she hold on to husband Cob (The Crown’s Daniel Ings) and young son Frank once the truth behind those risqué photos is revealed?

Dark, funny and provocative, I Hate Suzie questions whether, when the mask of ‘celebrity’ slips, any of us would handle our lives being laid bare. Fortunately, as Billie, 37, reveals here, she is nothing like Suzie…