Jamie Brittain talks Series 5!

Digital Spy

When you came up with the concept for Skins, what were your expectations? Did you know it would become so big?
"No, we didn't think it would be big at all. We thought quite the opposite - we thought it would be small. We thought we'd do one series that would go down alright and then never be heard of again, to be honest. So it was pretty mad when five years later we're still doing it. Very unexpected."

It's a new generation this series - when you switched before you had Effy for a link. Is it a clean break this time?
"Yes, there's no links to before, apart from a couple of teachers are still the same. Apart from that, yes, there's no link between the previous generation and this one at all. It's all entirely new. I think that gives you an entirely clean slate to start with and it means you've got no hangups or issues to deal with from previous series at all. It makes it very fresh and it feels very new and exciting."

Is it hard to create characters that we haven't seen before?
"It's very difficult. But we work very closely with all our writers to try very, very, very hard to keep our new characters distinct and interesting. It is very hard and it takes months and months and months, but if you do it right, which I think we have, you can get some really exciting characters."

Skins has covered so much in its stories too - is it hard to find new things to talk about?
"Sometimes it does feel that way but generally if you keep going and keep thinking to keep your mind working you can find new places to go. I sometimes think, 'How long can we keep going without running out of teen stories to tell?' but then I think of a show like Hollyoaks or EastEnderswhich keeps finding story after story after story for years and years on end, week in, week out. So if they can do it we can. I'm still surprised that we can keep coming up with new stuff. A lot of my young writers find new stories that we've never even considered before. That's one of the most exciting things about working on Skins - you get these young writers coming through with all these ideas which completely alienate some of those who are only five or six years out of teenage life, like me."

So what storylines can we expect in the fifth series?
"It's all about friendship, as usual. In the first series they were already friends, in the second generation everybody came together in the series, and in this one it's a mixture of the two. There are two groups of friends who kind of merge as the series goes on. That's the overarching storyline. It begins with an episode about a girl called Franky and how she makes friends with a group of already established girls. It kind of goes from there, really, and how she shakes things up and how she becomes a conduit to greater friendship between a larger group of people. In that we have stories about music and we have stories about sport and we have stories about brotherhood. There are quite diverse storylines - there's a lot going on."

We've heard this series will be a bit lighter - is that right?
"I think it's lighter. I took the series quite dark over the last couple of years which is fine. But I really wanted to do something as funny as possible this year. 'Light' is probably not the right word but it's certainly... maybe a bit more easygoing. There's a lot of laughs and a lot of fun. As usual there are dark places and there are unfortunate and sad events going on, but most of all it's about friendship and love and people helping each other out and people helping explore each other's personalities and stuff like that."

Are you wary of making Skins controversial and shocking for the sake of it?
"To be honest, I never felt like Skins is particularly controversial. I suppose I think that although there is a fair bit of sex and drugs and stuff like that, it's certainly not any more or any less than a lot of teenagers I could take you to right now. It's pretty realistic. I meet a lot of teenagers in the course of working on Skins and the general impression - not the universal impression but the general impression - is that it's fairly accurate and it's only slightly exaggerated."

What about things like Freddie's death last year - that shocked the fans a bit!
"Yeah. I wrote that episode. It's a tricky one, that. I feel like I've been punished quite a lot for that. The fans were very, very, very upset and annoyed and irritated by it, at least the more vocal fans online. I've sort of slightly refused to explain myself because I feel like to explain it would ruin the episode in a funny way. Needless to say, it's a very personal episode about dark, anxious, paranoid worry and things like that. I suppose if there's a point where you could say the series went too dark that's certainly it. But we're moving on now and we're looking to the future and this series is certainly nothing like those darker moments in series four. I've written two scripts this year and I actually set out to prove people wrong who said that all my scripts were dark explorations of psychosexual fantasies! The second episode is just very silly and good fun. It's all about Rich, who's a metalhead."

I heard that Rich is based on you...
"He's one of about 50 characters I've created for Skins who is in part based on me, yeah! I'm a complete music snob in real life and I basically dramatised that and thought it would be funny to take the p*ss out of myself. So he's an utter metal music snob and it's an episode based on that really. It's just very funny and has elements of romantic comedy as well. It's a good laugh, hopefully."

Do you have a favourite character this series?
"I do really like Rich. I also really like the character Nick. In some of the early stuff we've released of him a lot of people are a bit worried about him. They think he's going to be this jocky, sporty, up-himself a**ehole but I think when people see the episodes they will be very pleasantly surprised at what they get. He's a classic Skins character in that you see him, you think you know what you're getting, and then we hopefully completely destroy any preconceived notions you had about him."

How much are the stories based on your own experiences?
"I've kind of run out of my own stories to do! Now it's more feelings and emotions and just trying to draw on that. All our young writers this year are always drawing on their own experiences. I always say writing a Skins episode should be therapy. It's so bloody hard to write a Skins script that you have to kind of get something out of it at the end. If your reward is to work out why you hate your mother, then that might be quite good, as long as the episode's good I suppose!"

Are you worried about the fans' reactions to the new series?
"I'm fairly confident they'll like it, actually. It ticks all the boxes. It's fun, it's silly, there's plenty of laughter and lots of real emotions and all that kind of stuff. We've learnt a lot over the last few years and this is almost a best of in terms of the sort of episodes we do and the sort of jokes we do and the sort of characters we do. It's a real culmination of everything we've learnt over the last four or five years."

I suppose it's a testament to you that the fans get so attached to the characters, but at the same time it must make it difficult when you introduce a new generation.
"Yeah, it is a bit. It is quite funny to watch online everyone saying, 'You're ruining Skins by getting rid of the generation two characters', and you're like, 'We did it once before and it worked fine, so just trust us'. Skins loses some of its audience every year but it also finds a new audience every year so it's fine. It's not really a problem. It's obviously great to keep as many as possible."

Do you have any more news about the Skins movie?
"Bryan [Elsley]'s in the US at the moment working on American Skins and I'm obviously concentrating on UK Skins so it's slightly on the back burner at the moment. We literally just don't have time to focus on the film. I suppose as soon as both series are done, and they're almost done now, we should be able to get back into it and have some news for people pretty sharpish. We haven't had time to work on the film but it will happen, definitely."

You mentioned the American Skins - have you seen it?
"I haven't, actually. I've seen the first episode, which is basically the same as the UK's first episode. And I've read three or four of the scripts. It's very good. It starts off like UK series one and ends up going off in a completely different direction, and it's really good fun. It's a really good laugh and it's kind of American while still feeling like Skins. I've had virtually nothing to do with it because I've been so busy on UK Skins, but they've done a really good job on it. I'm very pleased with it. It's got my name on it and I'm happy to have my name on it!"

The fifth series of Skins begins on January 27 at 10pm on E4.

Labels: Brand New , digitalspy , interview , Jamie Brittain , Skins season 5