“I need to take these Spanx off and chill the f*** out.” Billie Piper is in the lift at The Emory hotel in London, calculating her next move. The past half an hour has been a whirlwind: a high-speed photoshoot that saw her lying on the floor of the hotel’s Rooftop Bar and throwing shapes in the cigar room to the anxiety-spiking beat of 2 Unlimited’s techno-pop 1990s hit No Limit (“What a song!”). She handled it like a pro. But it’s been a long day: starting at 5am and racing non-stop between back-to-back radio interviews, photoshoots and social media obligations. Such is the punishing promo schedule when the world is about to watch you in one of Netflix’s most popular franchises.
“It reminded me of an old pop day,” she says, now de-Spanxed and curled up in a plush dressing gown in the hotel suite that’s been temporarily transformed into her dressing room. Those pop days now seem a lifetime away — even though she still holds the record for the youngest singer to debut at No 1 on the UK singles chart with her 1998 hit Because We Want To at 15.
