Skins, a US adaptation of the provocatively-raw-yet-sweet UK show about hot young things trying to have a little fun and learn how to love while they find their way in the world, is so fresh and authentic because it is partially written by real teenagers.
US Skins‘ (which premieres tonight @ 10/9 c on MTV) head producer Bryan Elsley created the show with his 24-year-old son Jamie Brittain when Jamie was 19 because he complained about the UK not having any good teen dramas on television. What stemmed from that observation was one of the freshest shows to ever hit television. (Click here to watch the addictive Season 1 starring Nicolas Holt the kid from About a Boy all grown up to be evilly hot.) Jamie is now overseeing the UK version, which is in it’s fifth cycle and third cast (it changes casts every two years to keep things new and realistic.)
The professional writers on the show are intentionally young (median age 27 on US, though Elsley wants it to be lower), and include at least one full-time writer younger than 20. To help the already-young writing staff stay hip and current, teens from various walks of life, level of accomplishment, and demeanor are brought on as advisers.
Elsley tells NYMag’s Vulture how the teen advisers they bring on the show help with the process:
Thursday is teen day. They hang out with us, we read the scripts around the room, we do whatever we think. We eat pizza and talk about stuff. And the kids are all incredibly articulate … clever, actually. Not all necessarily the kind of kids you’d expect, ’cause we don’t just want a bunch of incredibly well-motivated, artistic-leaning, middle-class kids. It involves being told off by youngsters a lot. Just, “Are you kidding, Bryan? We don’t say spliff. Don’t you even know that?” And the group changes; people come and go, people have exams and disappear for a while and come back. And then out of that group emerge potential writers. Skins has a tradition of having professional writers under the age of 20. There’s always one on our team in the U.K., someone who we’ve invested in for two or three years. I think the next year, if we do it, I think Skins will have a writer under the age of 20. The average of the writers’ room is about 27, and we would prefer that to be younger. Obviously I kind of skew it.
