Ex-Bardot Member’s New TV Series Gets Airdate

Paper Dolls, a new series about a manufactured girl group thrust into stardom created by Belinda Chapple, a former member of Bardot, is coming to Paramount+ in early December.

Premiering on Paramount+ on Sunday, 3 December, and then airing weekly each Sunday, the new series follows five aspiring singers who form Harlow, a girl group born out of a reality competitive television show, Pop Rush (like how Bardot were born out of PopStars).

The five band members, as TV Tonight reports, are: Emma Booth (of Glitch fame), Emalia (Australian Gangster), Naomi Sequeira (Evermoor Chronicles), Miah Madden (Redfern Now), Courtney Clarke (Last King of The Cross) and Courtney Monsma (Frozen the Musical).

The emergence of Paper Dolls was shared by Screen Australia in February 2023. “With an assembly of so many bright, creative talents and brilliant music, we are thrilled to introduce audiences to the nostalgic Y2K world of Paper Dolls,” producer Jessica Carrera said. “The series charts the euphoria and complexity of striving for pop stardom while asking the question: how far would you go to get to the top?”

You can watch the Paper Dolls trailer below.

This isn’t the first time Bardot have re-entered the spotlight this year. In August, Chapple released a no-holds-barred memoir, The Girl In The Band: A Cautionary Tale.

Promoting the book in a news.com.au interview, Chapple revealed just how little Bardot were paid at the height of their fame.

“It hit home to us when we were sitting there signing albums for three hours straight, in every state, with a sea of people,” Chapple said. “And we’d look at each other and just go wow, we’re making a lot of money … And we’re not seeing a cent of it. It was tough.”

Despite fans spending $30 buying Bardot albums on CD and their debut album and massively successful single, Poison, reaching double Platinum status in Australia, the band members were only getting paid $35 a day–that’s under the poverty line. Meanwhile, their concerts, merchandise, album and single sales, and syndication from their PopStars appearances raked in upwards of $27 million.

Chapple continued, “Fans would say to us, ‘Oh, you guys must be rolling in it now, it must be amazing!’ We didn’t say anything. We didn’t go, ‘No, we’ve got no money.’

“We’d just sort of laugh uncomfortably and hope that they didn’t keep talking about it. It’s surprising that we toed the line so much … but we were young.”