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Billie Piper shared the inspiration behind her new feature film Rare Beasts and what it was like to direct her first movie while being seven months pregnant on Tuesday’s episode of The Late Late Show.
The actress wrote, directed, and starred in her latest release about a rebellious single-mother who navigates falling in and out of love. Piper told host James Corden that the film is a reflection of women’s mental health in the modern world. “I found the cultural sphere was ‘Woman you can go out, you can balance everything, you can have high-powered jobs, you can have meaningful relationships with your peers,'” she explained. “All this stuff that sort of said ‘you can have it all,’ and yet all I saw around me was this common crisis. And I didn’t feel like anyone was talking honestly or authentically about it. So that’s what I’ve tried to achieve in the film.”
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She added, “It sounds very heavy, and it is bleak. But it’s also, I think, quite funny.”
Corden pointed out that Piper made the film while being seven months pregnant. She said it was “inspiring” to work that far along into her pregnancy. “At the beginning of the pregnancy, you forget it. The end is a write-off. But that sort of middle bit — I feel like you have some sort of Matrix clarity in your mind, so it worked out really well for me.” She then joked, “Also, everyone was so much nicer to me because I was pregnant, so no one could be a bastard, you know?”
The multi-hyphenate also spoke about her early career as a singer. Corden revealed a picture of Piper attending the prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School in England alongside classmate Amy Winehouse. “She was amazing,” Piper said about the late singer. “As you can imagine, she was kooky and strange and she had this belting voice.”
The I Hate Suzie star recalled it being “horrific” to sing after Winehouse in class. “You knew she was going to be something incredible and it felt like you were at her private gig, so it was a gift as well as being, you know, this horrific act to follow.”
Piper’s music career took off a few years before Winehouse hit the scene. Piper’s debut single “Because We Want To” landed number one on the U.K. Singles Chart when she was only 15 in 1998. She followed up the track with singles “Girlfriend” and “Day & Night” which also reached the top spots.
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