Poppy Gilbert plays Chloe

Can you tell us about Chloe?

Chloe is a little bit complicated to articulate because we see her in two halves. We have the Chloe of Becky's mind and the ‘real life’ Chloe who I know, and I've worked on, and Alice (Seabright) knows and created. I think she is wise, a little bit quiet, but she’s very sure of herself. When we meet her in the series she's not shy - she's reserved, she knows herself well, and that’s why I like her.

I think her identity is so closely linked to her friends, Chloe is always making sure other people feel that they've got a friend in her, and that other people are feeling okay. I think she takes on other people's identities, and it’s only really in the last couple of years before we meet her at the point of the series, where she's started to ask the question, what's mine? What are all the things that are mine? What are my tastes? What house do I want to live in? Has she just ended up in Elliot's house, in Elliot's life? Is she a puzzle piece in his life? And I think she's starting to say no. I think her identity is forming and then is sadly cut short.

Chloe seems to be something of an enigma...

I think Chloe is incredibly enigmatic, in the sense that's how other people see her. When she comes across as enigmatic it's because people have misunderstood her. And whether that's because they've wilfully misunderstood her, or where, like Elliott for instance, has a picture in his brain of who she is, which isn’t really who she is. We get clarity the more Becky finds out, the more we see her diary, and the more we see the truth of what she was working out. But people think she might come across as an enigma because their opinion of her may have been poisoned.

Social media is a big part of Chloe’s life. Do you think there's a pressure for young people to portray themselves perfectly on social media?

I think social media is this wonderful thing that can be celebrated and can be used in the most powerful ways to bring people together. But I always think about what my mum used to say to me when I was little - “comparison is the thief of joy” - and I've always lived by that. I think it's the most powerful, beautiful thing, to remind yourself of when you get competitive, get jealous or anxious about how other people are doing. I think that that saying is a) really key in this show and b) key in all social media, because the main point of social media, where the difficult, crunchy, horrible bits come from, is comparing yourself to other people.

I think Chloe gets lost in that. Chloe is going through this incredibly difficult, manipulated phase of her life, where having been so sure of herself she's trying to work out why she's being made to feel a certain way by others. I don't think social media helps that, so she uses it as a sheen over what feels a bit bumpy otherwise.