Billie Piper and Oliver Chris are part of the company of actors helping to develop a new play for the National Theatre, exploring the sharp end of the tangled relationships between the Establishment, the Press and the police.
In short, the play — or rather the piece of satirical fiction — will explore the fallout from the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the Press.I understand Richard Bean’s play will also delve deeply into the psyches of some of the key players in, and around, the inquiry.
Piper, Chris and other members of the large ensemble have been workshopping the project with Bean and Nicholas Hytner, who will direct whatever emerges from all the developmental work.
The plan is that Bean’s untitled piece will be staged at the NT’s Lyttelton Theatre in the summer, and if it clicks with critics and audiences, it will be transferred swiftly into the West End.
The NT is hyper-sensitive about the production; all those with a connection to it are asked to sign a non-disclosure document. In fact, it’s being insisted upon.
Billie was last seen at the NT in Lucy Prebble’s play The Effect. She’s about to appear on Sky TV in the much-anticipated horror drama Penny Dreadful, from Neal Street Productions.
Billie Piper sees Penny as poetic and thoughtful, though her Brona Croft is living on the dog-eat-dog outskirts of society.
An Irish immigrant and “lady of the night” who turns tricks yet also faces a crippling disease, she doesn’t adhere to Victorian etiquette and acting “appropriate, even though the underworld of that era is perverse and mad,” Piper says. “She behaves like a lad, so even though the corset kind of straps you up, it was good to be loose in it.”
Billie attended Awesome Con this weekend in Washington DC. We’ll be updating the site with photos over the next few days, but in the mean time here’s a fun video of Billie with a weeping angel during her Q&A on Sunday!
We’ve added an outtake from a new photo shoot taken the other day. She looks gorgeous, hopefully there’s more to come soon!
Showtime has gathered up a superb group of actors, directors, and writers to bring to life a new series mixing all kinds of iconic old-school horror creatures in “Penny Dreadful.” The series’ name may strike you as odd, but it refers back to old British publications featuring garish horror serial stories that would only cost – you guessed it! – one penny. While this phrase may have originally represented a form of cheap entertainment, but “Penny Dreadful” is no such thing.
(More under the cut, contains spoilers!)
