Written and directed byBillie Piper, the dark dramedyRare Beastsfollows Mandy (played by Piper), a career-driven single mother of a challenging 7-year-old son who finds herself in a relationship with Pete (Leo Bill). Meanwhile, Pete is a man questioning the idea of the modern woman and whose belief in the sanctity of marriage leads him to view women as hypocrites, which definitely clashes with Mandy’s view on life.
During this 1-on-1 virtual interview with Collider, that can be both watched and read, Piper talked about what sparked the idea forRare Beasts, whether it’s more challenging to stare down the blank page as a writer or to direct yourself acting, who most helped her in shaping the final film, how she’d like to approach projects in the future, and what she learned from her first experience as a director that will influence the next time she does it.
Collider: What was it that sparked the idea for doing this? Was there something specific that you were looking to explore, or was something that you wanted to say? How did it start?
BILLIE PIPER: It started because, during my late 20s and early 30s, when I’d had my second son, I started to feel this enormous pressure and this cultural steer towards this habitable culture that seemed to be angled at women, particularly. There was this messaging that was like, “You can have kids and go to work and be massively successful. You can do everything. You can do everything really well. It won’t cost you anything, except your sanity,” which is what I saw and why I experienced myself, on some level, and continue to. What was so funny was that the world was suggesting that we can do all of these things, and yes we can, but there is a cost. All I could see around me, at this liberated time, was a common female crisis and I wanted to talk a bit more honestly about that with other women, ultimately. It’s not just about modern feminism. It’s also about how we can co-exist as men and women now, what that actually looks like, what this female modern movement has done to men, how people behave when they’re rejected, financial disparity, and all of it. It’s all in there, on some level.
You’ve collaborated as a producer onSecret Diary of a Call GirlandI Hate Suzie, but what made this the project that you wanted to tackle, as a writer and a director?
PIPER: I don’t know. I love movies. I felt like I wasn’t ever reading a script that was entirely honest about what it meant to be a woman. I think things have improved since I started writing the script. I start writing it nine years ago. My son’s now nine. The landscape has changed considerably, but that said, I didn’t recognize myself or my peers in the things that I was watching. I just felt very headstrong about taking full control of the entire thing. I was writing it, and I was gonna star in it and exec it. It wasn’t until the end, close to it getting financed, that I said I was gonna direct it too.
Is it more challenging to stare down the blank page and write a script, or is it more challenging to direct yourself acting?
PIPER: It’s more challenging to sit down and start writing. It’s tiring and really confusing directing yourself, but my vanity, that I have as an actor, very quickly subsided. I was able to watch myself on screen and not feel judgmental of the way I looked or anything like that. I thought that was gonna be a challenge because when I do self-tapes, often I’m like, “This is shit. I’m gonna do it a hundred times because I hate the way I look and I hate the sound of my voice.” It’s all the stuff that most actors go through. I got over that instinct really, really quickly. So, definitely sitting down and writing is more of a challenge.
Was this a script that you wrote and finished, and then went and shot what was on the page, or was there an evolution to what you wrote? Did you make a lot of changes, over a period of time?
PIPER: I would say that the film that you see is pretty loyal to the original script. There were a few scenes that were cut because it was just repetitive and unnecessary, but it didn’t change dramatically. I don’t know what number draft it was on, by the time we ended up filming, but it wasn’t a frightening amount of drafts. I guess I’m maybe a bit too lazy for that. I don’t know. What you see is very close to where I ended up with the writing.
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At any point, along the way, either in script form, or once you had shot it and had a finished movie, did you show it to anybody? Did anybody give you any good feedback or advice that you feel helped guide you?
PIPER: Yes, I went to a few people. I went to my closest collaborator and best friend, Lucy Prebble, who I’ve worked with for the last 15 years, and most recently, we didI Hate Suzietogether. She came into the edit suite, at a time when I felt very confused by the edit and I wasn’t entirely sure all of it was making sense. She is the queen of clarity and she was like, “None of it makes sense.” No. She was tough in places where it needed some guidance. And then, we showed it to a handful of people, and some of the editor’s friends and producers. It was quite a challenging time because this film isn’t gonna be for everyone. It is very, very divisive, in its tone, its style and its storytelling. It’s not terribly mainstream. It’s quite a lot. The characters are very unforgiving and very coarse. I got a lot of criticisms. What I realized is that it just genuinely comes down to people’s taste, which cloth they’re cut from, and what their experiences of life have been. There was no way to bend the film to make it more palatable. Every time I did do that, in a knee jerk reaction to what someone had said, it started to feel really diluted and really even more confused.
It’s always jarring when you see a woman gets slapped.
PIPER: Yeah.
What was it like to do that scene, where Mandy’s slaps Pete, and then Pete slaps Mandy back? What made you want to include that scene?
PIPER: Because when you talk about equal rights, or equality with males and females in straight relationships, quite often, that is weighted back at you, only with really stupid people. What can I say that’s more diplomatic? I can’t. Just stupid people who make that error of suggesting, “Well, she hit me, so I should be able to whack her back.” That’s when comes with arguing about equality in the male-female dynamic, I guess. It’s already a warped and confused and exhausting conversation that doesn’t ever go anywhere. I’ve seen some terrible behavior in my life, from people in the face of rejection. People who are really, really scared can do some really, really mean things. So, I just wanted to include it in all of its brutality, I guess.
Was that something you had a lot of conversations about, when you shot that scene? Did you speak to the actor about it, or did you just say, “This is what it is, so we’re going to have to just go for it”?
PIPER: I did say, “This is what it is. This is what it means. We’re just gonna have to go for it.” We effected the sound of it in post-production, but I felt it, let’s say. I think I was running on such amounts of adrenaline, at that period. It was right at the end of the shoot. It was the last three days. I’m not sure I would have felt anything physically because I was so disassociated from my body, at that stage in the process of making the movie, which is slightly alarming, considering I was pregnant. I was operating in another space entirely.
You’ve previously talked about how you want to work with your friends and that you only want to do work that is meaningful to you and that you can be invested in. What are you doing to make sure that continues to happen? Does that mean you’re going to be more involved, creatively, with every project you do now? How are you figuring that out?
PIPER: I’m feeling like I just wanna not work all the time. I wanna work on things that I feel aligned with and really excite me and mean I can push forwards even more, if that feels necessary. When you’re creating something from the ground up, it’s quite hard, especially with a family, to do that a handful of times in a year. So, for me, my biggest challenge, at the moment, is trying to work out how to just kick back a bit. I found going from being pregnant, filmingRare Beasts, directing it, post-production with a brand new baby girl intoI Hate Suzie, just knocked my block off. My quest, moving forward, is definitely working with people on things that have either come from me, or things that are very inspiring, or really fun things with fun people that don’t take up a lot time, or just not working.
What do you feel you’ve learned from the experience of directing that you think might influence or change how you do it the next time?
PIPER: I wouldn’t be in it. I would work closely with a producer that I’ve just recently worked with, who is very, very good on script. I think that’s really, really important. Otherwise, I don’t know what I would change. It’s part of an evolution, so things will naturally be different, and hopefully better and more refined, but I can’t guarantee that. But definitely, I would not be in it. That’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Rare Beastsis in theaters and available on-demand.
