Showtime’s answer to Sex and the City is the British-accented comedy Secret Diary of a Call Girl, which stars former Doctor Who star Billie Piper as Hannah, a tartly voiced university graduate who makes her living as a high-class call girl named Belle. Based on a blog by real-life call girl “Belle de Jour,” the show doesn’t glorify prostitution, presenting it merely as just another career choice for ambitious young women.
Season 3 of Secret Diary of a Call Girl debuts at 10 p.m. on Jan. 25 (and on ITV2 in the U.K. on Jan. 28) and starts with a behind-the-scenes special with Piper and the actual Belle de Jour. Hannah is still living a double life; her family believes she is a legal secretary, while only her closest friends, including the jealous Ben (Iddo Goldberg) and ditzy fellow call girl Bambi (Ashley Madekwe), know the truth about her profession. But the secret is further complicated by her new job as a famous author operating under the pseudonym of Belle de Jour, following the publication of a steamy book based on the titular call girl’s diary.
“Since she’s basically outed herself, she’s quite a different woman,” said star Billie Piper.
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One plot thread that won’t be explored this season is Hannah outing herself as the real-life Belle de Jour did this past November.
The pseudonymous author Belle de Jour was unexpectedly revealed to be Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a 34-year-old University of Bristol research scientist who supported herself while writing her Ph.D. thesis by working as a high-class call girl. It was a double life that Magnanti allegedly kept secret from everyone around her.
Piper met the real Belle de Jour once before shooting the first season of Secret Diary but was unaware of her full bio. Since Magnanti went public with the identity, the two have spent time together, which Piper said was a great experience.
“It was good actually because the first time I met [Magnanti] was before we filmed the show and I could see she was trying to maintain her [anonymity],” Piper told The Daily Beast. “It was strange and covert… I felt slightly on edge about the whole thing, to be honest… Since she’s basically outed herself, she’s quite a different woman… She’s as ever insightful and candid and funny and it was [just wonderful] to sit in front of her and hear her stories.”
Piper said that when she met Magnanti she knew that she was no longer employed as a call girl. But Piper certainly didn’t realize that the woman she knew as Belle de Jour was in fact a child-health researcher at Bristol University.
“I didn’t know really anything about her job as a scientist,” said Piper. “It’s amazing isn’t it that all of these years of… work as a call girl financed her time to study and now it’s come to fruition? It helped me to understand how she’s able to compartmentalize so easily because she works in numbers and sums, so everything is kind of organized and has its own place. I think that’s what made it easier to be a call girl and live with this enormous secret.”
Piper hasn’t yet had the opportunity to reconcile her portrayal of Hannah with the truth of Belle de Jour’s identity as the upcoming third season was written and shot before Magnanti publicly outed herself.
“We filmed this third season before she outed herself, so I was still none the wiser when it came to her current profession,” said Piper, who acknowledged that the revelation did challenge some of the preconceptions Piper had about Belle de Jour. “I always knew she was a bright, well-cultured woman but I had no idea about how her mind worked and how clever and intellectual she actually is.”
U.S. viewers will get a chance to see Magnanti this Monday evening as Showtime will air a half-hour conversation between Piper and Magnanti ahead of the launch of Season 3 of Secret Diary of a Call Girl, set to begin the following week.
When we last saw Hannah, she was heartbroken over the failure of her relationship with seemingly perfect boyfriend Alex (Callum Blue), who had discovered that his girlfriend was working as a call girl after catching her in flagrante delicto.
“She [has] definitely recovered from her last spell of love,” Piper said. “She is a published author, so she’s now almost like three different people: She’s the call girl, the sort of average girl Hannah, and then the author [Belle de Jour]… Love comes knocking at the door again but dressed very differently.”
That new lover would be Hannah’s editor, Duncan, a new character who is played by James D’Arcy ( Mansfield Park). While they meet cute at his publishing house over a proposal for a second book, their relationship soon becomes quite thorny.
“It starts off platonic with [their] business relationship and she’s reluctant to let it change shape in any way,” said Piper. “It’s a warped relationship because she can confide in him in a way that she hasn’t with anyone, apart from Ben, of course. I think she finds it weird but also thrilling to finally talk openly about who she is and her perverse ideas and he really encourages that in her because he wants her to continue writing and [being a] call girl. It’s quite a twisted relationship, to be honest.”
As for Piper, she relished shooting a season of Secret Diary while not being pregnant, as she was during the filming of the sophomore season.
“It was a breeze in comparison to last year and it’s still quite taxing,” admitted Piper. “Because I had my son just five months before we started shooting, my hormones [were] naturally just all over the place, but I was surrounded by a very good cast and crew and in very good company, and good hands.”
As for whether Hannah will hang up her handcuffs, Piper was noncommittal about the future of Secret Diary. She’ll next be seen on BBC later this year opposite Sue Johnston in an adaptation of Kay Mellor’s stage play “A Passionate Woman,” directed by Antonia Bird ( Priest).
“We’re undecided,” said Piper about a potential fourth season of Secret Diary. “We’re going to see how this third series goes and then see where the story will go from there. We’re not entirely sure.”
Jace Lacob is the writer/editor of Televisionary, a Web site devoted to television news, criticism, and interviews. Jace resides in Los Angeles. He is a contributor to several entertainment Web sites and can be found on Twitter and Facebook.
