British actor Kaya Scodelario has revealed that the cast of Skins were paid the “absolute bare minimum” during the show’s run, due to the majority of the cast being unknown names without previous acting credits.
Speaking on the Really Good Exposure podcast with fellow Skins star Megan Prescott, who played Katie Fitch in seasons three and four, Scodelario described how the popularity of Skins didn’t always match up with the cast’s paycheques.
“We were part of a really huge show, and we weren't paid particularly well for it,” she recalled of the Bristol-based teen drama series. “I mean, we didn't have agents. We didn't have any experience. We weren't known names. So they got away with paying us the absolute bare minimum.”
The 33-year-old actor gained fame by playing Effy Stonem in the E4 series, a stylish, selectively mute, rule-breaking teenager, and the longest-serving member of the Skins cast. More recently, she’s become known for playing Susie Glass, a main character in Guy Ritchie’s hit Netflix series The Gentlemen.
Skins is often praised for its talent-scouting, which catapulted the careers of actors like Daniel Kaluuya, Dev Patel, Nicholas Hoult and Jack O’Connell. Skins bosses purposefully cast “unknown” actors, with open auditions held at youth clubs and theatres across the country.
Scodelario told the Really Good Exposure podcast she was scouted for Skins as a teenager smoking in the street near the audition venue.
“[My] school got faxed through about open auditions at the National Youth Theatre in Holloway, which was on my way home from school, and [the audition call out] was for 16 to 18-year-olds. I was 14 at the time but I really wanted to go,” she remembered.
Skins creator Brian Elsley was outside having a cigarette, Kaya remembers. “He saw me cross the road, and I think I was smoking a cigarette. Of course. Yeah, very proper London teenager. And he came over and he asked if I wanted to audition for Effy, and I did.”
But Scodelario didn’t get the part. “[It] went to someone else,” she said. The other Effy went as far as filming several episodes before her mother realised Skins’s adult nature and pulled her out of the series.
“Her mum realised that she wasn't comfortable with her child playing this part or something like that, disagreed with the scripts or whatever happened, happened,” Scodelario recalled, “and she was gone and then I was brought in.”
Scodelario is currently filming The Gentleman series two for Netflix. Meanwhile Prescott has announced her own one-woman play at Soho Theatre, Really Good Exposure, following a sold-out three-night preview run as part of Soho Rising and a critically acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe debut in 2024.
Performances run from September 2-13, with tickets available on the Soho Theatre website.
