The ‘Skins’ Legacy: The Price That Comes With Realistic Portrayals of Teenage-hood
Fourteen years ago, “Skins” debuted on the screens of E4. To this day, it remains extremely popular thanks to its depictions of wild teenagers, sexuality, religion, and reckless partying. The cult series continues to garner fans from newer generations. Characters such as Effy, Cassie, and Michelle have had their aesthetics echoed throughout every corner of pop culture. Most recently, even TikTok has found itself immortalizing the phenomenon of Skins. Thus, ensuring that the Skins legacy lives through generations.
An aspect of the series that has always been praised was casting actual teenage actors to play teen characters. Bryan Elsley, co-creator of the show, explained that his son Jamie Brittain told him to “write a show about teenagers, but one that means actually something.” And so, the concept of Skins was born. Open Casting calls were held in various locations throughout the UK, calling for young people from ages 16-18. Meaning, all of the actors on screen were approximately the age of the characters they were portraying. Kaya Scodelario, who played the iconic Effy, even revealed that she initially lied about her age to get an audition. At the time, she was only 14 and too young to meet the minimum age requirement. Still, the casting directors were so impressed that they decided to create a character for her. Just like that, the Tumblr It-Girl Effy Stonem was born. A character so iconic, that she quickly became the face for both the show and the network.
Over the years, loads of TV programs have been criticized for casting actors in their 20s or 30s to play teenagers in a high school setting. Audiences claim that it does not look realistic and that it adds to body image issues among young people. After all, it is true that most 16-year-old boys look nothing like 27-year-old Corey Monteith did in season one Glee back in 2009. However, it must be noted that there are fair enough reasons for networks to employ older actors in these roles, such as child working laws and the restrictions that come with employing minors.
Unless we’re talking about a Disney Channel series, TV shows tend to depict somewhat realistic portrayals of teenagers. Topics such as sex, mental health, and drugs are usually introduced to explore the intricacy of teenage-hood. Even by today’s standards, Skins pushed the boundaries of what is acceptable and appropriate for young media consumers and what isn’t. Growing up isn’t that pretty, and the writers of the show knew that. This is what gave the show its success, young watchers could relate, and those who could not relate had something to aspire to.
April Pearson, who played Michele in Series 1 and 2 of Skins, recently opened up about the downsides of being on TV at such a young age. In her podcast titled “Are you Michelle from Skins?”, she invited fellow Skins alumni Laya Lewis, who played Liv in Series 5 and 6, to discuss their experiences filming. “There’s a difference between being officially old enough and being mentally old enough”, Pearson says regarding the sex scenes she filmed while on the show. Both actresses revealed that the first-ever scenes that they shot were sexual. “I turned 18 right at the beginning of filming, so I just had so many more sex scenes than everyone else”, Lewis explained. She continued by saying “if you want to pluck children out of the street, which is essentially what they were doing in order to have this authentic on-screen thing going on, there needs to be a bit more help”.
The actresses expressed having mixed feelings about their time on Skins. On the one hand, they too agree that the show was good at “representing young people for young people”, still they didn’t feel protected. About this, Pearson said, “What do you want to do? Do you want to not be a young person and seeing those things? You were getting up to that stuff. That’s a good point. Perhaps it just meant that for me, I was too young”.
Pearson is hopeful for the future of the film industry though. “The fact that nowadays there’s an intimacy coordinator, like that is a standard as part of shooting nude, intimate scenes. That just simply wasn’t a thing”, she explained. Laya Lewis added, “something like that would have made a huge difference on set for us”.
April Pearson also compared her time on Skins to Paul Mescal’s time on Normal People, the drama television series for Hulu, which had some groovy sex scenes. “He was asked ‘how did the sex scenes make you feel?’ [...] And he just said ‘empowered’. [...] At no point, if an interviewer had asked how did you feel during the sex scenes on skins make you feel would I have said empowered. No way. Hopefully, that’s a sign of the times.”
Still, the uncomfortable sex scenes weren’t the only bad experiences they endured during filming. Lewis explained that while shooting for series 6 “we each had to, in a bikini or our swimwear, one-by-one stand in a room with just us and [a man] a lot older than we were then, and be told whether we looked good or not, good enough to film in Morocco."
Additionally, they were told to “skip meals ahead of shoots”."At the time you're young and you don't know any better," Pearson added. "You don't really know what to say, to speak out, is this okay… And as with a lot of victims of trauma, you look back at it and think, 'Yeah, that was f**ked up.'”
Even years after wrapping the show, Pearson and Lewis are still under the shadow of carrying the Skins legacy. “I came across a website, it was an article about ‘Where the Skins stars are now, and it states that neither you nor I have done anything noteworthy since leaving the show”, Pearson mentioned. Many Skins stars such as Dev Patel, Nicholas Hoult, and Kaya Scodelario have gone on to star in many Hollywood movies, while other cast members opted to step out of the spotlight after the show ended.
In response to this, Laya Lewis said “Who’s writing this sh*t? They don’t know us. It’s the beauty of the internet, that it’s so easy for people to put this stuff out there about people they’ve never met with complete disregard to if you ever come across it, how sh*t that could make you feel.”
Following these words by Laya Lewis and April Pearson, a representative for Skins co-creator Bryan Elsley said: "We’re deeply and unambiguously sorry that any cast member was made to feel uncomfortable or inadequately respected in their work during their time on Skins. We’re committed to continually evolving safe, trustworthy, and enjoyable working conditions for everyone who works in the TV industry."