Fourteen years after Skins star Megan Prescott played troubled teen Katie F**king Fitch, the actor is baring it all in her semi-fictionalised Edinburgh Fringe debut.
The era-defining Channel 4 teen drama Skins, which ran from 2007 to 2013, proved itself a goldmine for fresh talent and launched the careers of acclaimed actors such as Dev Patel, Nicholas Hoult, Daniel Kaluuya and Kaya Scodelario.
Megan, now 33, joined the second generation of the cast at the age of 16 opposite her identical twin sister Kathryn Prescott as the new batch of students navigated the messy highs and lows of teenhood.
The show was notorious for its explicit, no-holds-barred nature, tackling everything from sex and drugs to mental illness and bullying.
‘Skins was a huge cultural moment,’ Megan told Metro.co.uk as she prepares to take her one-woman show, Really Good Exposure, to Edinburgh Fringe in August.
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‘Even now, people still compare shows to it like [HBO’s] Euphoria. And Gen Z is rediscovering Skins on Netflix and making it relevant again.
‘I do think it was an important show because it highlighted issues that weren’t being discussed at the time, especially for young people. Obviously, some of it was glamourised but I do think it was a good thing that Skins was made.’
During her stint from 2008 to 2010, Megan’s character Katie embarks on a self-defeating quest for popularity, struggles with her sister Emily’s identity as a lesbian, and strikes up a brief affair with Freddie McClair (Luke Pasqualino).
‘It was my dream job and I couldn’t have asked for anything better, it was all I wanted,’ Megan said of the whole experience.
‘Then after Skins, I had a bit of a reality check where I was like, “oh, actually, you don’t just go from a TV show to Hollywood.” You’re not set for life, it is hard work and you don’t just get things handed to you.’
Aside from small appearances in shows such as Silent Witness and Holby City, Megan hunkered down for the long haul as she juggled various jobs to sustain her creative career.
‘The second I started stripping there was a lot of internalised misogyny,’ Megan said of the first time she forayed into sex work.
‘I thought “I can’t tell people this, if anyone in the acting industry finds out I’ll never work again.” I think a decade ago that would have been true, unfortunately. So I went back to doing regular side jobs for minimum wage.’
When her manager refused to furlough her during Covid, with just £300 in her bank account, Megan took her friend’s advice and launched an OnlyFans account.
‘It completely changed my life,’ she said, noting that although many people were negative about her starting sex work again, it was a key source of income for her.
Really Good Exposure, which she said was a ‘decade in the making’, reflects on Megan’s life experiences through the lens of Molly – ‘a fictional former child star who, approaching 30 and already ‘peaked’ career-wise, considers turning to p*rn’.
The synopsis continues: ‘Body shaming, peer pressure, mental health stigma, victim blaming, sexual harassment all comes with the territory of being the ‘child star’….doesn’t it?’
As with most girls growing up in the 00s, especially under the public spotlight, Megan developed an unhealthy relationship with her body.
‘I grew up with very unhealthy narratives about eating and exercising,’ she explained.
‘I think there are some things about being a woman from that specific time period.
‘The mental health shaming of Britney Spears, and the fat shaming that was in the tabloids when I was growing up? The media we consume as young people is so integral to our worldview when we get older.’
But she hopes her show can form a bridge between millennials and Gen Z so they can understand what it was like back then.
‘There was a huge amount of body shaming, huge – there still is – but it was unreal back then. I’ve tried to package it in a way that is relatable, but it’s not re-traumatizing. Hopefully.’
Megan has worked on her relationship with her body over the years and, at one point, even tried her hand at bodybuilding where she placed fourth in the British finals.
‘It is extreme and it is incredibly hard work but something I will forever be glad that I have a photo of myself doing,’ she said.
To bring her show to the Fringe, Megan sold nude photos of herself on OnlyFans a decision she explained was entirely practical.
‘I’m autistic so I’m very logical,’ she continued.
‘I needed money for a show that involves a nude scene where I talk about contextual and conditional consent. In my mind if I’m going to be naked in the show why would I not use the platform that I’ve been using to get by for the last three years?’
Although Megan knew people had been requesting ‘head-to-toe’ pictures for years, she was initially ‘scared’ of the potential implications given the advancements of facial recognition software (a valid concern given the recent scrutiny over AI-generated porn).
Ultimately, however, she decided to bite the bullet.
She added: ‘I was being a hypocrite. I was saying there’s nothing shameful about being naked. There’s nothing shameful about sex work. There’s nothing shameful about OnlyFans. But I didn’t have a huge amount of skin in the game. I put my money where my mouth is.
‘The world didn’t end. Nakedness is fine. I’ve been simulating sex on television since I was 16. I’m 33 now, I can be naked on the internet, it’s fine.’
Megan filmed her first sex scene with on Skins when she was still a teenager, and sums the whole experience up with one word. ‘Cringe’.
‘The sex scene was a very, very, very, embarrassing day,’ she recalled.
‘It’s very awkward to be that young and you’re so hyper-aware of insecurities you have in your body when you’re that age anyway. That scene will forever remain in my memory.
‘My sister had to walk in on us so that was an added nice element of cringe. Coming of age is hard enough when you’re not in the acting world.
‘You put a teenager who’s still trying to figure themselves out in the very strange, weird and wonderful world of acting and that’s a whole other ballpark.
‘Being a teenager on a TV show that all your friends watched was a wild experience. I’m very glad I had my twin sister going through exactly the same thing.’
Given the intense scenarios the young actors were put in, Megan admitted she’s unsure if Skins could be made today given the amount of ‘safeguarding’ in place now ‘for good reason’.
‘Obviously, I was acting well before the MeToo movement, and before intimacy coordinators were even a thing so it was a very different world,’ she explained.
‘I do think the industry has changed for the better now. But it’s not fixed. Outwardly, people can’t be quite as obvious with their predatory behaviour but I think some of it is a lot more insidious.
Really Good Exposure
You can find tickets for Megan Prescott’s Edinburgh Fringe debut at the Underbelly here.
‘I think if it were to be made today there would be so much around supporting the cast. Especially if they were actually as young as we were when we did it. But I do think it could be done.’
As for where Megan sees herself next, she’s only just beginning. After selling out her preview shows in London, she’s hoping to bring it back to the capital and even develop Really Good Exposure for TV, where it all began.
‘When I pictured the story, I wanted to tell in my head, it was actually a TV show,’ she said.
‘But TV is notoriously so difficult and inaccessible. I’m autistic, and I have ADHD so there’s certain routes into TV that won’t work for me. But I do want to tell this story.’
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