I talked to her about the significance of the role in The Peripheral, where she plays a trans person in the future. The show is based on a novel by William Gibson, who coined the term cyberspace, and it was produced by Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan. It's a complicated story that moves around in time and explores whether the digital world is real or not. And the show is different from the book, as it uses Gibson's story as a jumping off point for ideas about our future. And that gives Billings some interesting leeway to play Lowbeer as a trans person in the show.

He uses this tick-tock ratcheting of tension and brief, bright flares of action to move the plot -- an extended, punctuated chase scene that starts early and continues through 400 pages. Verity and Eunice are the rabbit. The hounds are contract assassins, military contractors, tech-bros in over their heads. And Gibson, in his Gibsonian way, just keeps winding the wire around his explosive core, looping in gig-economy surveillance applications, outlaw makers, a barista, a time-traveling robot, a housewarming/launch party complete with helicopter assault.