This article contains discussion of themes including abortion that some readers may find upsetting.
There was a lot left unanswered at the end of I Hate Suzie, Lucy Prebble and Billie Pipers’s anxiety-inducing comedy-drama which was one of the best things to come out of 2020.
Piper plays former child star Suzie Pickles, whose world was turned upside down when her phone was hacked and her intimate photos released to all and sundry, leaving her career and marriage in tatters.
Suzie spent the days that followed trying to regain control of her life but she was dealt another curveball in the finale when she discovered that she was pregnant, a question that’s swiftly resolved in I Hate Suzie Too.
“[An abortion] felt like the most logical step for our character,” Piper told RadioTimes.com. “She’s not in a relationship, she doesn’t want the baby, she needs to meet practical goals, to make money. It made sense story-wise to start from that place.”
Prebble added: “We weren’t even sure we were going to do a second series, so it wasn’t part of some grand plan.
“It was just the worst way for that character to end up at the end of that series, and you’re often aiming towards the worst situation when you’re trying to write something that resembles tragedy.
“And then the next question is, ‘What would she do?’ And the answer is she would have an abortion.”
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But we don’t see Suzie tussling with her conscience. She isn’t racked with guilt about the decision she’s made. She returns from the chemist, shuts herself away in her sister’s box room and does what she needs to do.
“[We wanted] to do it in a way that we’re unused to seeing, which is, ‘This is something I’m going to do for myself as opposed to some moral conversation,’” said Piper.
“If, for example, we’d made a choice for her to have that baby, that would have been a much more conscious political decision because I don’t believe that’s what that character would have done,” explained Prebble.
“But [with Suzie’s choice], that’s the truth of what loads of people do every day and we never see it except in quite harrowing, emotive, moral ways. It’s [usually] set in the past and it’s sort of a Vera Drake or an Alfie where you’re watching a harrowing abortion in a backstreet, and that’s not the experience most people have of an abortion.”
Piper added: “I genuinely think some people will not know that you can have an abortion using those pills at home rather than being sent somewhere and having an awful procedure.”
Read more: Billie Piper explains I Hate Suzie Too’s unsettling clown dance scene
Prebble went on to discuss the very specific manner in which the scene plays out: “I wrote it as being quite mundane and exhausting and monotonous.
“The rip, the wrap and the roll was something in the script as a sort of dance move. The towel comes off and gets wrapped up, put in the bin, another one goes on. And there’s a very familiar sound to that.
“I really wanted to make sure that we got the right sound mix because I knew that a lot of people would recognise exactly what that rhythm is, even just for having very, very heavy periods.
“We really just wanted to really show it in a way you never see, which is the practical reality of it. And then for her to sort of go on and tell a different story with her life, which again is what almost everybody who has ever had to abort a pregnancy has done.”
If you’ve been affected by any of the issues discussed in this article, you can visit MSI Reproductive Choices UK and Abortion Rights UK.
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