SHE'S been hailed the new “queen of weekend telly” after landing a huge deal to become the face of Saturday and Sunday mornings on ITV.
But Katie Piper can still remember the pain of being rejected by agents who told her that she had no future in television.
In 2009, the year following the horrific acid attack that left her with severe facial burns, she’d hoped the success of her award-winning Channel 4 documentary Katie: My Beautiful Face would lead to further opportunities in front of the camera.
However, it proved impossible to find a showbiz rep willing to take her on and, while nobody was so tactless as to say outright that it was because of the way she looked, Katie instinctively knew they were unable to see past her scars.
“Nobody said: ‘Oh, your appearance is a problem.’ But they told me they couldn’t see anything beyond ‘this’. It was like: ‘It’s terrible what happened to you, but that’s it.’
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“It was disheartening. Maybe they genuinely felt that they couldn’t do anything with me and didn’t want to get my hopes up.
"But it was a stark reality of: ‘OK, this isn’t going to be an easy life.’ I know everyone faces rejection, but it was hard.”
It wasn’t just agents who cast her aside. Katie also experienced the cold shoulder from production companies, who thought viewers would find it difficult to relate to someone so visibly scarred.
Katie, 40, says: “I’d go into meetings with ideas to pitch and I’d always be met with: ‘How is the viewer going to believe and buy into you being there?’.
"Instead, they would suggest ideas to me like: ‘Katie goes to India and meets other women who’ve had acid thrown in their faces…’ As if that was all I could be interested in.
"I’d see other women my age doing the kinds of things I was pitching. Sometimes I’d challenge it and question why so-and-so was doing it and not me. I’d never really get an answer.
"But it’s because they didn’t see me as ‘that’. It’s part of British culture to put people in a box and think that’s the only place you can see them.
“This was 15 years ago, when ‘diversity’ meant having one black person in a soap opera.
"There weren’t people with facial disfigurements or any kind of scarring on display on TV, in the beauty world, modelling or anything like that.”
Katie was 24 and an aspiring presenter starting out her career with promotional modelling gigs and jobs on digital TV, when she was attacked in March 2008 by an obsessive ex, who had arranged for another man to throw sulphuric acid at her in a London street. Both men were later jailed for life.
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Katie was lucky to have survived, but there was an agonising road to recovery ahead to rebuild her face and her life – her injuries have required more than 400 operations since that day.
'It bruised me'
There have been devastating psychological scars to heal from, too.
Her parents David and Diane were desperate for Katie to quit London and move back home to Hampshire permanently, where she could work locally and have a quiet life – but Katie had other ideas.
In the years since those initial knockbacks, she has blazed a trail, pushing for greater diversity in public life and changing the face – quite literally – of the TV industry.
She went on to make two further personal documentaries with Channel 4, wrote her autobiography, a series of self-development books, as well as newspaper and magazine columns, plus took on public speaking engagements and set up the Katie Piper Foundation, which provides support for burns survivors.
I had such a good support network, and I came out of that stronger and feeling I could do anything
Katie Piper
What’s more, she continues to fight for a change in legislation around sentencing, regulation and reducing accessibility to corrosive substances.
Given everything she’s achieved through sheer perseverance and extraordinary strength of character, it’s hardly surprising that giving up her dream of being a TV presenter was never an option.
“Being a young woman and having such a big trauma affected the way I looked, the way I felt about myself and my place in society.
"But I had such a good support network, and I came out of that stronger and feeling I could do anything. And so when that wasn’t reciprocated at work, it was really hard.
“But although it bruised me to realise that people ‘like me’ didn’t go on telly beyond being a contributor, I decided to carry on doing what I was doing. I didn’t let it stop me.
“It was a huge thing that happened to me, and it showed me this amazing part of myself I hadn’t known before.
"I became so passionate about the treatment I’d had and I knew I had this calling with my charity to go out there and show other burns survivors that the quality of life can be there.
"You can still be a CEO, you can still feel sexy, you can still wear revealing clothes, you can still date and you can still turn guys down! You don’t have to be apologetic and just fit in and get by.”
She adds: “I will always feel grateful to Channel 4, because they commissioned shows and let me do my thing.
"That gave me financial independence – I was able to move out of my parents’ home into a one-bedroom flat on my own.
"As women, financial independence gives us confidence and freedom.”
I will always feel grateful to Channel 4, because they commissioned shows and let me do my thing
Katie Piper
For the first two years following the attack, Katie had to wear a clear plastic mask on her face and remembers being asked how she was going to cope.
“I told people: ‘Obviously I’m going to go to drinks parties, I’m going to go to red-carpet events, I’m going to work.’
"I didn’t want to stay on disability benefits and not work while I was wearing the mask.
“I always put myself out there, but I suppose the world wasn’t quite ready then.
'Diversity'
"Now I see people doing it on Instagram and there’s diversity on the platform, which I’m so pleased about.”
It took a few more years before Katie got the break she always believed would come.
In 2018, she took part in Strictly, which brought her to a wider audience, but it was when Loose Women came knocking in 2021 that she was given the clearest indication yet that the tide was finally turning.
She’s been a panellist on the ITV daytime show ever since. Then, in 2022 she launched the first series of Katie Piper’s Breakfast Show on Sunday mornings.
“Back when I was burned, you wouldn’t see a burned or disabled person on TV talking about current affairs, politics, relationships or sex.
"I certainly didn’t see them in beauty or fashion campaigns. So coming over to Loose Women and then progressing to my breakfast show was like: ‘Wow!’
"I was being employed to interview celebrities and talk about all the normal things that women talk about and I never once had to refer back to my past, or what happened to me or how I came to be in the public eye.”
After a successful second stint last year, her breakfast show has returned for a third series on Saturdays and Sundays – and Katie couldn’t be more at home.
“I love the format, because guests don’t just come on for a 10-minute interview and plug a book or a single – they stay for an hour and I really get to know them.”
I aged overnight – in seconds I lost my youth, my looks and my appearance, all from being burned
Katie Piper
She adds: “The best guests are comedians. Jo Brand was everything I wanted her to be. She was funny, witty, engaging and she made the other guests at home.
"People like KT Tunstall and Sophie Ellis-Bextor were also fantastic – super-smart, intelligent, successful women.”
Katie has been married to carpenter and builder Richie Sutton, 40, since 2015 and they have daughters Belle, 10, and six-year-old Penelope.
As a couple, they’ve been together for 13 years, after a friendship developed into something more.
“We were friends, then I went away travelling and working in America and we became phone friends,” says Katie.
“I’d be on the phone to him and wake up in the morning with the phone on the pillow and realise I’d fallen asleep talking to him.
“I think that friendship was a good foundation for us. Then having a child with someone first [before marriage] isn’t something that’s for everybody.
"But in a funny way, it laid everything bare and we saw who we both were. I saw how resilient and unselfish he was, and it was almost like seeing him as a dad made me love him even more than seeing him as a husband.”
Katie’s medical treatment is ongoing and will remain so for the rest of her life.
She would prefer not to talk about it at all (and mostly doesn’t) but when the surgery is so visible, people tend to ask questions.
“I have lots of things all the time that aren’t visible and I don’t tell anybody, I keep it private.
"But the unfortunate thing is, I don’t have that choice when it’s my face and I have to acknowledge it. After that, I like to move forward, because I don’t want it to define me.”
She turned 40 in October and says she’s never felt more stable and content. With age and experience has come the realisation that youth and beauty do not necessarily equal happiness.
“What I’d say to younger people, especially women, is that we’re obsessed with youth and the value of women being wrapped up in that.
"The only people telling us all this bulls**t about being happier when you’re younger are billion-dollar businesses, the beauty industry and our capitalist society.
I have to concentrate on my acceptance rather than seeking everyone else’s
Katie Piper
"It benefits them to keep women chasing youth. And we don’t need to!
"I aged overnight – in seconds I lost my youth, my looks and my appearance, all from being burned. I can tell you now, that’s not where happiness is at.”
She mentions Pamela Anderson, who recently decided to ditch make-up and go bare-faced – a move that has been described as “powerful” and “courageous”.
Pamela, 56, has said herself that it’s been a “healing experience” and Katie loves what the former Baywatch star stands for.
“She spent her life being subjected to the male gaze – her work and her career have been built on that. Now she’s saying: ‘You know what?
"That didn’t bring me fulfilment or happiness – I know there’s so much more to me than what you all told me.’ To those who are asking her where her make-up is, she’s saying: ‘I don’t care! This is who I am and what I’m doing.’
“And I suppose I also genuinely got to a place where I knew I wouldn’t be for everybody and I couldn’t change that. I have to concentrate on my acceptance rather than seeking everyone else’s.”
Does Katie take satisfaction from proving wrong all those who doubted her? “I’m not a believer in revenge,” she says.
“I think the best way to silence a naysayer is to proceed without bitterness. If you’re putting energy into revenge, it’ll take energy from your own success.
“I became more determined than ever. I wasn’t going to let somebody else write the end of my story.”
- Watch Katie Piper’s Breakfast Show, Saturdays and Sundays, 8.25am, ITV1.
