Billie Piper explains I Hate Suzie Too's unsettling clown dance scene

RadioTimes.com caught up exclusively with Piper and the series's co-creator and writer Lucy Prebble, to break down this unsettling scene.

Piper said of Suzie's thinking in this moment: "She really wants to shirk this sexual, slut shaming image that we saw a lot in the first season. And sometimes the best way to do that is to completely mask yourself. And de-sexualize yourself and somehow make yourself as inaccessible as possible. And so the makeup, the costume just felt like a great way to do that."

Piper continued: "And her ambition [is] that, 'Oh, they'll like this, they'll really dig this because it's alternative, it’s fun, it’s a side of me that people haven't seen before, I can be silly and things,' and actually the audience receive it as, 'You're being pretentious, you're unreadable. It's cold, and women shouldn't be clowns.'"

‌Meanwhile, Prebble added: "Formally, thematically, there was an interesting thing about the internal and the external. One of the big themes is on stage and off stage [is], like, 'Who are you with the smile and the makeup? And who are you actually underneath that, who isn't smiling?'

"And so I think that first dance, we were moving between the external experience of her being very colourful, and trying to people please and do the splits and be a good dancer, and her internal of 'S**t, what's the next move? 123? Okay, what do I need to do next?'"

‌Piper also said the dance was showing what Suzie "thinks about herself". "Which is, 'I'm sort of like a monster in these moments.' It's her shadow self."

Piper previously said that this season's dance element was added in part because she wanted to dance, adding: "What’s good about doing [I Hate Suzie] is that it feels like I’m getting to do Strictly without having to do it."

Additional reporting by Abby Robinson.

I Hate Suzie Too is coming to Sky and NOW on 20th December 2022. Find out more about how to sign up for Sky TV here.

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