Billie Piper: co-parenting with Laurence Fox ‘enormously difficult’
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Billie Piper has said co-parenting with Laurence Fox is “enormously difficult” in an interview providing the most detailed account of their relationship.
The Doctor Who actress, 41, was married to actor turned political campaigner Fox from 2007 until 2016 and they have two sons together, Winston and Eugene.
She told British Vogue she “had to make some choices and a divorce speaks for itself” and that his family, including his sister Lydia Fox and her husband Richard Ayoade, “might have a more interesting take” on him.
Piper, who recently starred in I Hate Suzie and is in the upcoming Netflix film Scoop about the explosive Newsnight interview with the Duke of York, added that the privacy of her children was “paramount”.
Fox, 45, founded the Right-wing political group the Reclaim Party in October 2020, and is strongly associated with the “culture wars” after an appearance on BBC’s Question Time, which he claimed resulted in him being “cancelled from a 21-year acting career”.
Last year, the actor, known for his role as DS James Hathaway in the detective series Lewis, was sacked as a presenter on GB News following comments he made about a female journalist.
Asked how Piper deals with co-parenting in the wake of Fox’s controversial remarks, she responded: “With enormous difficulty.”
She added: “I close everything down and keep a very strict routine with the kids so that there’s consistency. I keep them close. That’s all I can do.
“I try to keep people from telling me stuff but it’s really, really hard. I don’t read it but everyone wants to talk about it. Sometimes I have to say to people: ‘Please don’t bring this to me, now or ever’.”
Piper continued: “It’s made me feel stronger in many ways. I’ve learnt I have a lot of resilience I didn’t know I had. I’ve had to learn the hard way that you can only control yourself and how you react to things. It’s really f------ hard ... I hate that.”
She says she also continues to be asked about her first husband, the DJ Chris Evans, who is 16 years her senior.
“It was 20 years ago,” she added. “It makes slightly more sense to constantly be asked about husband number two, but even then I resent that because we’ve been separated for almost 10 years.”
Piper is currently in a relationship with Johnny Lloyd, the lead singer of Tribes, with whom she shares a daughter, Tallulah.
Fox in a statement on X, formerly Twitter, said he took “great exception” to his former wife’s claim that co-parenting with him was “extremely difficult”.
He said: “The children remain to this day, as they have done since we divorced, in a shared care 50/50 split between each parent.
“I am very happy in my relationship and I wish her happiness too. I do however take great exception to the assertion that co-parenting with me is enormously difficult”.
“I have never tried to deny our boys access to their mum and I would never wish her anything other than a stable family, which it seems continues to elude her.
He added that while “not perfect”, he has done his “absolute best to put the kids first”.
This month, Ofcom said comments made by Fox on Dan Wootton Tonight on Sept 26 last year “constituted a highly personal attack on [journalist Ava Evans] and were potentially highly offensive to viewers”.
The media watchdog ruled they were “degrading and demeaning both to Ms Evans and women generally” and “clearly and unambiguously misogynistic”.
Following the ruling, Fox wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he was not “overly bothered about this anymore” and “could have expressed myself better, that’s life and I’ve said my bit”.
Wootton, who had previously apologised for the remarks off-air, left GB News after the Ofcom ruling, saying that he was launching his own online platform and called on the Government to have the watchdog “reined in”.
See the full feature in the April issue of British Vogue, available via digital download and on newsstands from Tuesday 19 March.
