Everyone’s Talking About That Toilet Scene In ‘I Hate Suzie’ – Why Is Every Relatable Female Character Now Found On The Loo?

The first episode of I Hate Suzie was incredible, tense and claustrophobic. The episode sees protagonist former child star and actress Suzie Pickle, played incredibly by Billie Piper, tearing through her country house as a magazine team descend for a weirdly Cruella Deville-themed photoshoot, trying to prevent her husband and son - or in fact anyone - from going online and discovering that she’s been the victim of a phone hacking leak, that sees photos of her performing a sex act on a man (not her husband) released to the world.

The only moment where Suzie stops, just for a second, on her own, is when she locks herself in the bathroom, wearing a borrowed fur coat, and has a very audible bout of stress diahorrea. Is the first of many deft moments in the show where Suzie’s dignity gets chipped away at, bit by bit. The scene made me laugh at the time, and hats off to Billie Piper, who approached every moment in the show, including that one, with total devotion. But days later, I’m still thinking about that massive shit, and given that it gets a mention in almost every review of the show I’ve read, I’m not the only one.

Billie Piper And Lucy Prebble On I Hate Suzie

Is it just that we’re so unused to seeing a woman doing a very noisy dump right on camera (because let’s face it, we really are)? Or is it just because the scene is so wonderfully acted by Piper (sounds weird if you haven’t seen it, but it is)? Either way, toilets-as-talking-points is fast becoming the sub genre of quality TV we didn’t know we needed. From Bella and Terry’s many toilet scenes in I May Destroy You(because what better way to demonstrate that two women are BFFS than to have one of them having a wee while they talk?) to Fleabagand her sister Claire’s miscarriage conversation in the toilet of a restaurant (because what better way to demonstrate that two women are sisters who really care about each other than to have one of them barge into the other ones’ toilet cubicle? Etc etc), the guys at Armitage Shanks are finally getting the screen time they’ve always longed for.

In other hands this would be lazy writing, but when Michaela Coel (I May Destroy You) and Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) have already done all the hard work of writing nuanced, layered female characters and giving them proper dialogue and storylines and agency, a toilet scene that launches a thousand #relatable memes doesn’t feel like a shortcut.

Lucy Prebble Talks Billie Piper And Why Shiv Will Go Wild In The Third Season Of Succession

But back to Suzie Pickle’s genre-defying toilet stop. Because even if you put our societal squeamishness around women and bodily functions to one side, how often do we ever get to see a female character laid that bare, in such a solitary moment, without fanfare or ceremony? Only 20 minutes into the series and we’ve seen a character who will also be unlikeable, out of touch, neurotic and selfish at her absolute most vulnerable. When you think about it, that’s one powerful loo break.

The term ‘relatable’ is wildly overused and often best deployed with an eye roll, but let’s get real: there’s nothing more relatable than your first reaction than, when your world falls apart, to need a massive nervy poo. Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper, you’ve raised the bar for ‘relatable’ to a whole new level, and for that we salute you.