In contrast, her taste in film is as dark as you’d expect for someone in a Tim Burton project. “I’m not a goth chick but I lean towards the absurdity of life, dark humour. It’s where my tastes naturally sit. While I watch trash on TV, if I watch movies my desire is to watch heavy, sad, dark movies. It’s a heavy kitchen sink drama, the Ken Loach world. Very gritty Britty.”
Wednesday is after all a celebration of outcasts, a category Piper feels great affinity with. “I’ve definitely spent a lot of my life trying to be a mainstream girl, which has its merits. But internally I am naturally more drawn to the darkness, and I’m only really expressing that with my work in the last 10 years,” she explains.
Photographer: Sirui Ma
Now she’s raising teens of a similar age to the Nevermore characters. Piper says that painful puberty whirlwind where you’re burdened heavily with a fear of being social pariahs or worried you might be a freak hits harder as an adult onlooker.
“It’s harder to actually watch than it is to experience yourself, because at least when you’re in the middle of it yourself, you feel like maybe you have some control over what’s going on with you. But as a parent watching it, it is so out of your control,” she says. “There’s things that are just part of life that you sort of have to let happen. You have to allow sad moments, conflict, all the stuff that’s natural that builds your character. You just have to sit on your hands and watch.”
So what’s next for Billie who has conquered music, dance, and international television? “I’m probably not going to go back into music but I’ve been thinking recently about how I could merge the worlds. I love dancing, and want to find if there is a way for me to dance and sing but not live, and have it sort of married with a movie. So basically a musical,” she explains.