Keeping it in the family: The new star of Skins - Freya

Freya Mavor is finding it difficult to fit in interviews this week.

She’s into extreme essay-writing for her final-year dissertation on organ donation which forms part of her studies in religious and moral philosophy at an independent Edinburgh school.

And, as if her studies weren’t making life hectic enough, Freya, 17, is dashing between Edinburgh, London and Bristol to promote the new series of Skins, the in-your-face yoof TV drama she’s just joined.

She’s a member of the third generation of teens who muscle into series five of the award-winning programme, the first episode of which airs on E4 next week.

In the programme, Freya plays Mini McGuinness, whose willowy blonde good looks may have all the boys swooning over her, but whose queen bee demeanour masks a more vulnerable side.

For someone who’s never acted professionally before, Freya’s screen debut is pretty striking.

“I was very apprehensive,” she says of filming on location in Bristol. “Because I’d never done it before, it was even more worrying, but I couldn’t imagine how nice everyone was going to be.

“Obviously Skins is joyful and lovely, even though it can be quite dark sometimes, and I just couldn’t believe I was getting to live out my passion like that.”

Of Mini, Freya giggles that she’s “a bit of a bitch, really”.

“She’s manipulative, slightly bossy and demanding, a bit of a stereotype of the tall blonde school bully, really. But as the episodes go on you see behind that, and see that she’s not really a bully as such, but someone who always wants to be in control, and doesn’t like it if something is unfamiliar.”

Already a fan of Skins, Freya decided to try out for the show after overhearing people talking about open auditions while she was on a bus. After eight auditions, she was surprised to be cast at all, let alone as a character so hard-nosed.

“I’m the last person to start bossing people around,” she says. “I’m such a pushover, and would be terrified of Mini in real life. Sometimes I could hardly say the lines because I felt so bad and kept wanting to say I was sorry.”

If the name Mavor rings a bell with theatre-goers, it’s because Ms Mavor’s small-screen debut in Skins sees her become the latest member of an artistic dynasty that has had a major influence on the Scottish and international theatrical scene.

Her father is James Mavor, who, apart from leading the MA screenwriting course at Edinburgh’s Napier University, is developing an adaptation of James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner with Ian Rankin, whose work he adapted for the 2007 TV film, Reichenbach Falls, directed by former Traverse playwright and member of the Merry Mac Fun Show, John McKay.

Mavor has also written for popular TV dramas such as Dr Finlay and Monarch of the Glen since his career began with award-winning plays at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Further back in the lineage, Freya’s grandfather was Ronald “Bingo” Mavor, the Scotsman newspaper’s theatre critic from the late 1950s until 1965 when he became director of the Scottish Arts Council.

During his tenure, Mavor encouraged Jim Haynes and Richard Demarco at the fledgling Traverse Theatre, and later helped to develop the former Third Eye Centre in Glasgow, which would eventually become the Centre of Contemporary Arts.

As a playwright, his works were produced at the Byre Theatre, St Andrews, and the Pitlochry Festival Theatre. One of these, the 1972 piece, A Private Matter, controversially featured a full-frontal nude scene that might even cause Skins aficionados to blush.

However, it was Freya Mavor’s great-grandfather who really changed the Scottish theatrical landscape. As a playwright, Oswald Henry Mavor, aka James Bridie, he was influential in Scotland, London and on Broadway with works such as The Anatomist (1930) and Mr Bolfry (1943).

Even more significant, however, was his role in setting up the Citizens’ Theatre and a college of drama in Glasgow in 1950, the forerunner of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, effectively changing Glasgow’s artistic map forever.

Mavor/Bridie also played a role in the inauguration of the Edinburgh International Festival.

“I never really saw much of my granddad,” says Freya of Ronald Mavor, who died in 2007. “I guess writing is quite an isolated thing to do, so there was never anything glamorous to be around, but I must have got this passion for what I do from somewhere, so it must have influenced me.

“It’s brilliant to think of some of the things my great-grandad achieved, which were phenomenal, but it’s nice to go in on the acting side of things. Obviously I can ask for tips, but I’ve never acted in front of my family, so it’s going to be quite strange.”

Freya’s previous acting experience was in school productions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest as Miranda and in The Merchant of Venice prior to a stint in the National Youth Theatre.

She has plans to continue her passion on stage and screen, expresses a penchant for physical theatre – “not mime!” – and would love to play that other tough cookie, Hedda Gabler.

“She’s an insanely strong character,” Freya enthuses, “but I wouldn’t want to get typecast in bitchy parts. That’s not the role I’m used to in life. At least, I hope I’m not a controlling bitch.”

In truth, theatre has never been very far from Skins, from its playing style to its creative personnel. A certain Scottish influence also crept into the mix long before Freya was cast. Skins co-creator, Loanhead-born Bryan Elsley, began his career in the 1980s as a Scottish Arts Council-backed trainee theatre director, working with 7:84, Wildcat and the Traverse Theatre, and adapted Robin Jenkins’s novel, The Cone Gatherers, for Communicado in 1991.

Elsley had also been one half of the comedy duo, Dusty and Dick ,with Harry Enfield, who was cast in series one and two of Skins as the father of leader of the gang Tony. Other sketch show actors such as Sally Phillips, Morwenna Banks, John Bishop and Arabella Weir also lent the series a heightened archness that suggested all grown-ups are ridiculous. Peter Capaldi played the terminally angry dad of geeky Sid in a manner not unlike his Malcolm Tucker creation, receiving visitations from the likes of Maurice Roeves and Mike Nardone as he went. In series three there was even a scene at a bus stop involving a bottle of Irn-Bru and a bad impression of a Scottish accent.

Developed from workshops and with large dollops of creative input from the cast and a pool of their contemporaries, Skins is effectively youth theatre on the telly, albeit prettier, racier and with a better soundtrack.

However, Elsley isn’t involved in this third generation, having decamped to the US to work on an American version of the show, while his son and Skins co-creator Jamie Brittain takes charge back in Blighty.

Given her own pedigree, what does Freya’s father think of his daughter’s move into the spotlight?

“He’s mortified,” she says. “No, I’m joking. My parents are just happy that I’ve started doing something I love. Of course, any dad watching their daughter in a programme like Skins would always be worried, but by the same token I’m really nervous about my friends and family seeing me act, because it leaves me really exposed, and if I’m really bad at it then I’m screwed.”

Beyond her dissertation, high on Freya’s list of priorities are plans to attend the Edinburgh leg of a series of Skins parties taking place in the home town of each cast member.

Whether the event ends up as debauched as similarly styled nights-out in the show remains to be seen, although, at just 17, Freya’s under- age status may already be causing a kerfuffle.

“It is an over-18 thing,” she reflects, “but I’m sure they’ll make an exception. They can’t kick me out. That would be quite bad.”

And for a moment there, it could be Mini McGuinness talking.

Skins is on E4 from January 27. The Skins party is at The Caves, Edinburgh, on January 25.

Labels: Brand New , entrevistas , freya mavor , interview , Mini , Skins season 5