How do you hide a pregnant prostitute?
On a television show, you use photographic magic.
Billie Piper stars in the Showtime cable series “Secret Diary of a Call Girl,” which is about a high-priced London prostitute. Piper was six months pregnant while shooting the second season of the series.
“We have a good director of photography. Then there were times we used body doubles. I just didn’t feel like doing the scenes. My body was changing every day,” Piper says.
More head-and-shoulders shots helped hide her evolving pregnancy.
In the end, she was photographed with many of the often-used methods: big sweaters or coats when the weather is obviously cold, sitting behind desks or carrying packages, and, as she mentioned, a body double.
On the show, Piper plays Belle, a working girl who has developed a deep philosophy about the world’s oldest profession. She shares her thoughts with viewers through onscreen monologues.
And that makes her more nervous than the nudity in the show.
“You have to break the fourth wall all the time. And that is a hard concept for me to get my head around. You are taught never to do that. Then suddenly you are going against all the rules of acting,” Piper says.
Piper plays the role as an attractive girl next door, someone anyone might know. That kind of fits with how her show-business career has unfolded.
She’s only 25 years old, but has had a huge fan base for 10 years through her early career in music.
She signed a record deal at 15 and had three No. 1 hits in Britain including “Because We Want To.”
Piper didn’t start out to be a singer. Her dream from age 8 was to be an actress. But the music career came along and delayed her dream. Now, she’s happy the music career came first because she says it helped her deal with fame.
That experience came in handy after she was cast in the popular BBC science fiction series “Doctor Who.”
She has seen something of a downside to fans accepting her as Belle after knowing her as a singer and on “Doctor Who.” It is certainly a mature story. Mostly, though, since “Secret Diary” started airing, Piper has seen a dramatic change in the way men react to her.
“Men don’t come anywhere near me anymore,” Piper says with a Cheshire cat smile. “They seem so threatened by me now. They also just stare for ages. Like I’m going to do something wild and raunchy.
“Much to their disappointment, it never really happens. And lots of guys ask me questions, sex-based questions for their own sexual accounts. So it’s kind of — it’s an interesting place to be.”
