This year, groundbreaking Channel 4 teen TV drama Skins turned 18. A fully-fledged adult age. The age, in fact, of its drug-taking, sexually active, at-times-complete-tearaway characters and stars.
Garnering controversy and teen obsession when it launched in January 2007 due to its explicit sex scenes and excessive on-screen drug use, as well as one very memorable coffin theft scene, Skins was an institution for those growing up in the 2010s.
The series also acted as a launchpad for the careers of many young stars. Tony star Nicholas Hoult has gone on to star in the X Men series, alongside Anya Taylor-Joy in The Menu and in many many more star-studded projects, while Anwar actor Dev Patel starred in Slumdog Millionaire, as well as Lion with Nicole Kidman, and last year directed his own project Monkey Man.
The Hollywood multi-hyphenate talks joining the cast of Wednesday, mother-daughter relationships and channelling her outcast energy.
Jack O'Connell – who played Jack the Lad Cook – has seen his star rise in 2025 playing a vampire in Ryan Coogler's Sinners, and Skins' “Posh Kenneth” Daniel Kaluuya has starred in huge projects such as Jordan Peele's Get Out, as well as Queen & Slim with Jodie Turner-Smith and directed Netflix's 2023 dystopian drama The Kitchen. Skins remains a huge example of platforming new industry talent and young actors, across class and race.
But the path to stardom wasn't as simple for some of the Skins alumni – particularly the female stars. While “Katie f**king Fitch” actor Megan Prescott has brought her show Really Good Exposure to London's Soho Theatre after an award-winning run at the Edinburgh Fringe last year, the entire premise of her semi-autobiographical one-woman show is based on some of her own struggles to build a career post-Skins, as well as the typecasting she faced from depicting sex on screen as a young woman and how this led her to build a career in sex work.
“This show is based on true events, if it didn't happen to me it happened to someone,” she says at the end of the show, highlighting that her own experiences aren't unique, and are part of a wider problem within the entertainment industry.
In an interview with GLAMOUR after the premiere of her one-woman show, Megan opened up about the ways that she struggled to book new roles after Skins wrapped, including being typecast as a certain type of female character – namely one who has been sexual on screen.
“Women in the industry have a particularly hard time,” she said, describing being passed over for roles in period dramas and “girl next door” roles because she had starred in a show about “sex and drugs and rock and roll”. “I didn't fit that bill because of people's association, even though it wasn't me,” she said. “But when it comes to men, we can separate their sexuality from their self, and I think maybe that's why the men that were in the show didn't have [comments like] ‘oh, you were on TV doing fake drugs’. I don't think that followed them as much.”
April Pearson, who played Michelle in the first edition of the show, has also previously described trying to get meetings with agents after her time on Skins but “no one was really interested” and she “wasn’t getting auditions”. “I loved that kind of work but people would say ‘Didn’t you used to be famous?’ or, ‘Weren't you Michelle from Skins?’ and that immediately put me on the backfoot," she said. “It made me feel like what I was doing wasn’t exciting and reflected badly on me as a performer because I wasn't nominated for Oscars, Emmys or BAFTAs.”
She also described in a previous interview feeling “very exposed” on the Skins set during sex scenes and reported being yelled at by strangers in the street. “It was difficult for me because there was a lot about Michelle’s nipples, she was called ‘nips’ for short, and had one boob bigger than the other,” she said. “I think we all struggled with the intimate scenes too because they are so awkward and no one can prepare you to perform a sex act in front of a room full of people.”
The show is famous for giving young actors from all social classes the opportunity to enter the world of TV and film, but it seems that the nature and attitudes of the industry arguably stopped certain female stars of the show from advancing as quickly as they perhaps could've – and should've – done.
Hannah Murray – who played Skins favourite Cassie – found success on Game of Thrones as Gilly, though, while Effy star Kaya Scodelario recently starred in Guy Ritchie's TV take on The Gentlemen and is set to appear in Keira Knightley's next Netflix project The Woman In Cabin 10, set to drop next month.
But, as Megan says, the success trajectory of women from the show still feels slower, and harder earned. “I look at her sometimes and I'm like, why did it take so long so you to reach the success that you deserve? She's f**king brilliant,” she tells GLAMOUR, adding that Naomi actor Lily Loveless also pivoted to TV writing. “I think we all struggled after Skins,” she added.
“It's taken longer than it should have,” Megan says of Kaya's success. “I don't think she's ever stopped working. That girl is the hardest working person I know. I just think if she wasn't as tirelessly hard working then it wouldn't have happened.” And why is this? “Women have to do it all to even just to get a look in,” Megan says.
In a post #MeToo world, it's important to ask these questions – why women who star in huge, influential projects and cultural moments like Skins have differing experiences to their male counterparts when it comes to their career trajectory. And, in particular, the ways in which their sexual presence (on screen and off) influences and warps their visibility and perception in the entertainment world.
