Mitch Hewer interview

Digital Spy has a new interview with Mitch Hewer about his role in ITV’s new drama ‘Britannia High’

That Mitch Hewer is a bit of a dark horse, you know. After graduating from Skins earlier this year, the young actor landed a part in ITV’s big new musical drama Britannia High (and spent some time revealing an entirely different side of himself, but that’s not for here). The new role is squarely in "triple threat" territory, requiring Mitch to act, sing and dance. How equipped was he for the challenge? And what on Earth is the deal with that curly new hairdo? We gave Mr Hewer a call to find out.

What’s Britannia High about?
"Britannia High is this new, edgy series which follows the lives of seven kids, their friendships and the troubles they go through at stage school. There’s a live episode at the end of the series, which has never been done before. I think it’s totally different from High School Musical, Fame and that era of dramas."

What’s your character, Danny, like? He’s very different from Maxxie…
"He’s a lot different from Maxxie! Danny is very much the charmer, the ladies’ man of the school, the joker. He’s an all-round talent and a very accomplished musician who plays the piano to a very high standard. But he does have a problem which threatens his future at Britannia High, and it’s the last thing that any of the students want because they’re all there to be the best. You find out in episode two what it is."

There are lots of song and dance numbers in the show. Are you a natural dancer?
"I’ve tapdanced since I was 11 years old. I always wanted to be a tapdancer and that’s all I ever wanted to be. I never dreamed of being an actor! [Acting] just kind of came along, which was a bit surreal for me."

You had a big dance number in a church in Skins. Do you think that swung you this role?
"I don’t really know. Some people could say that. The only thing I know is that I auditioned like everyone else did and I prepped just as hard as everyone else had to prep. I guess the part of Maxxie in Skins meant I had a profile already, but I still had to have a seven-hour audition with Arlene [Phillips], which was quite tough."

And is it you singing in the show too?
"Yes, it is. I never trained in singing, although I happened to go to a college in Bristol called SWADA (South West Academy of Dramatic Arts) when I was 16. But to me training is when you go to London and train."

What do you make of the comparisons to High School Musical?
"I feel Britannia High is aimed at an older audience than High School Musical. Britannia High is more of a serious drama, with the music and dance on top. Also we have a reason to go into songs, because we’re at drama school."

Were you happy with the way things ended for Maxxie on Skins?
"Well yeah, I guess so. It was quite a nice ending, going to London. I had an amazing experience doing Skins. It was the first acting I’d ever done in my entire life, so I had to learn on set for those two years. I had to keep my head screwed on and learn from the other cast."

Have you stayed in touch with the cast since filming ended?
"No, unfortunately I haven’t. I guess we’ve all gone our separate ways. I don’t know if they see each other but I’m in Manchester so I’m quite far away from where I originally live. I don’t know if they’re working now. I haven’t got a clue."

Was it your choice to overhaul your hair for Britannia High?
"It wasn’t my choice but I think it’s good for me as an actor to completely change my look. I don’t want to get stereotyped through my blonde hair. Maybe I’ll do a film next time and have crazy make-up on!"

What are your career ambitions for the future?
"I’d love to be able to do a really good English movie. My dream is to go to Hollywood and see what happens over there. All I can do is work really hard because I’m sure there’s someone out there who has the same level of enthusiasm as me and can do the same stuff as me, if not better. I have to give it everything I have to get where I want, which is in LA doing Hollywood blockbusters."

Source: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/a133096/mitch-hewer-britannia-high.html

Mitch learnt how to act - on the set…

Mitch Hewer has said he had to learn how to act on the set of Skins.

Talking at the launch of his new TV show, the young star said: “Skins for me was terrifying. This is still the same but when I was on Skins it was kind of like ‘oh my God’, because I’d never acted in my life when I got the job.

“So I was learning how to act on set, and tried to learn off the cast, learned off the directors. I was lucky, my Dad was played by Bill Bailey and Harry Enfield was on set and so I just tried my hardest to learn. It was like an extension from college,” he said.

Luckily his casting in the teen drama led to good things - a role in Arlene Phillip’s new TV series Britannia High.

“It came off the back of my old job to be honest. Arlene’s daughter spotted me apparently in Skins. And then it just came on from there. It was like ‘OK we need to see this guy’, and I had an audition. It was about seven or eight hours - it was a long audition,” he said.
Click here!

The first episode of Britannia High will be broadcast online in October - a week before it goes out on TV - on the Britannia High website www.itv.com/britanniahigh.

Source: http://www.thisisnorthdevon.co.uk/showbiz/Mitch-Hewer-Skins-terrifying/article-353617-detail/article.html

SuperSuper Magazine Scans

Hayley from Skins Online has scanned in the pictures from SuperSuper Magazine. She says she’ll scan the interviews when she gets back off holiday.

Skins’ Creator Elsley Turns to Junior Drama

Source: The Guardian

The creator of the hit E4 teen drama Skins has revealed he is working on a new project based on the lives of younger children.

Brian Elsley told an audience at the Edinburgh TV festival yesterday that the new series - which he said was "at the commissioning stage" - would be set around the lives of a group of 10- to 15-year-olds.

He would not go into more details, but told MediaGuardian.co.uk later that it would be "nothing like Grange Hill".

Elsley has become hot property since Skins became a hit for E4. The drama charts the emotionally charged lives of a group of teenagers in Bristol.

Skins has been criticised for its unashamed portrayal of their hedonistic lives, but its authenticity has won it a huge following among young viewers.

"I don’t think Skins broke any ground in terms its target audience," Elsley told the audience in Edinburgh. "Whatever kids tell their parents is a lie. Kids party all the time."

However, he said that young people thought harder about sex and relationships than adults give them credit for - and he attributed the success of Skins to its realistic portrayal of the complexity of teenage emotions.

At the session in Edinburgh, Elsley went on to say that much of British TV drama lacked depth. "There’s not enough meaning in television drama," Elsley told the audience.

He said later that the squeeze in television commissioning budgets had led to a serious problem in TV drama. "It’s a complex problem", he added, citing the fragmentation of the TV audience, the economic climate, and a consequent lack of bravery among TV executives.

Elsley praised the marketing department at Channel 4 for its imagination in promoting Skins.

The campaign focused on the show’s party element and in one instance fell foul of the Advertising Standards Authority. But the campaign won plaudits, taking the gong for best advertising campaign at this year’s inaugural MediaGuardian Innovation Awards.

Elsley also said much of the show’s impact came from its interactive elements, which involve the audience through an extensive website, which allows viewers to share ideas, find out about casting sessions and submit music to the show.

Cool.

Joe Depsie - What’s Next?

Courtesy of Popsugar UK who met Joe at T4 on the Beach:

Joe also told me about his new movie The Damned United, on which he’s working with Jim Broadbent and Timothy Spall. It’s a film about Brian Clough’s forty-four day reign as coach at Leeds United and he’s playing footballer Duncan McKenzie. Joe said that working with such amazing actors like Jim has meant it has really been a "watch and learn experience" for him, and he was so excited about the opportunity. He laughed as he told me that as it’s set a few decades ago we’ll get to see him looking a little silly and wearing some interesting wigs. I can honestly say Joe was the loveliest celeb I met backstage on Sunday, he was genuinely nice and said he hoped we could sit down for a longer chat with him soon, so watch this space!

Interview with Joe Depsie

Chris Miles may have left our lives for good, but in the real world, outside of Skins, (which sometimes we forget isn’t real) Joe Dempsie is alive and well you’ll be pleased to know. 4Talent caught up with Joe to find out how it feels to be shouted at in the street, and what his plans for the future are.

Joe’s already got an episode of Doctor Who under his belt (‘The Doctor’s Daughter’, fact fans) and there’s plenty more where that came from, thank you very much. “After being in Skins, I want to wait ’til the right project comes along. It has been a great platform” Dempsie would, however, like to work with director Shane Meadows (This is England, Dead Man Walking), who is also from Joe’s home town of Nottingham and who casts from the same Nottingham drama group that launched Dempsie. "I would love to work with him and I like the way he works too; his films have a really natural feel and are always plot driven."

Joe recalls the first time the potential success of Skins hit him. "I remember the advertising campaign for Skins. We had no idea how big it was going to be," he says. "You know CentrePoint in London - they have a huge billboard there and Skins was on it. I remember looking at it thinking, this programme is going to be big. Ironically enough it was during that period a year ago when there were really high winds and it blew off." Luckily that didn’t affect the show too much. In fact, every billboard in the UK could have blown off in some freak Wizard of Oz style accident, and people would still be talking about THAT trailer , before the show had even aired. Luckily, Skins lived up to the hype, winning a load of awards to boot.

So what’s it like playing such a popular, likable character? Chris, er Joe says "I am much more boring that he is!" Isn’t everyone? He says the most awkward situations are when people notice him walking by and shout out, ‘SKINS!’ or ‘CHRIS!’ "I am not going to shout back, ‘Oh! Lovely!’ So I just keep walking."

Before Skins or ‘BS’ as we refer to it, Joe actually trained for 7 years at the Central Junior Television Workshop in Nottingham and then Skins came along. "For me, it was all about right place at the right time" he admits. We can honestly say we’re pleased he came into our lives; we couldn’t imagine another Chris, it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Jamie Brittain Answers Your Questions

Lovely man!

Interviews with the Cast

Series Three Preview

Tomek and I are both stupidly busy at the moment so it’s going to be at least another few days before we can even think about typing up the interviews that we did on Saturday so here are a few facts that’ll hopefully keep you drooling for the time being.

1) There’s a new character who frequently uses/abuses? drugs but isn’t so much of a party animal as Chris was.

2) Episodes 2 - 4 have been written.

3) Effy "is" going to have an important role but it’s not just based on her.

4) Power is an important theme in S3.

5) Filming begins in about 8 weeks.

6) They’ve hopefully found the twins they were auditioning for, but haven’t quite found the Polish/Eastern European guy yet.

7) We "aren’t" going to find out what happens to Sid and Cassie in NYC.

I know that isn’t much but trust me we know LOADS about S3 and we will tell you more soon.

Skin Deep

SOURCE: http://www.4talentmagazine.com/2008/04/22/skin-deep/

In a small central London room a fiery debate has just erupted. “I just think it’s not that simple,” says Lucy Kirkwood, 24. “Female friendships are more complicated than that.” The rest of the group sit up from their coffees, awaiting a reply from the middle-aged man chairing the meeting. “Lucy,” he says with a hint of frustration, “for me, female relationships are about power; are about control. That’s what all the girls we’ve talked with have said.” There’s a pause. Everyone sits back to think again, and takes a swig of coffee.On first appearances it could be a particularly engaged university tutorial. Ten or so people are stuffed onto sofas, most of them in their teens and early twenties, and each has been passionately arguing their position for several hours. But there are a couple of mature students sat among the youngsters, one of whom looks suspiciously like the comedian Robin Ince.

There’s also a kid in the corner sipping from a juice carton who, from a different angle, could be the spitting image of Posh Kenneth from Skins. Just as everyone is about to leave a cheery announcement comes from the chair that settles any lingering confusion: “Congratulations on the Bafta nomination, guys!”

If you haven’t seen or let alone heard of Skins yet, you’re presumably a resident of a particularly out-of-touch old peoples’ home, or had your cable connection accidentally switched to North Korean state television. In two seasons, the show’s chronicling of the trials and tribulations of a group of sixth-form students from Bristol has gone from a semi-cult hit adored by its target under-25 audience to one of Channel 4’s triumphs of the last five years.

Whereas most depictions of British teens fall somewhere between gun-toting hoodies and bleach-blonde proto-WAGs, the creators of Skins pride themselves on having crafted a show about young people that doesn’t shirk controversy or paint an overly rosy picture. Indeed with awards, high ratings and a new season in the pipeline it seems things could not be going better.

“It’s not usually that heated,” says 23-year-old Skins co-creator Jamie Brittain an hour after the writers meeting, seemingly more relaxed now away from the creative coalface. “This time round was a little more intense than normal; we’re obviously all excited about making the new series.”

It would be hard not to be excited in his position. Not only does Jamie have to sort his laundry for an award ceremony later that night, but his phone has been ringing constantly with mysterious calls from Japanese numbers. “The explanation for that is a bit strange really. When we were filming one of the online bits I accidentally left my phone number in one of the scenes after the edit. Now I am getting constant calls from Japan from people there who watched it.”

Being ‘big in Japan’ is a measure of success in any field, unless you’re Spinal Tap. But it’s not only the show’s ‘conventional’ success of good ratings and awards that have seen television industry types get their pantaloons in a twist. Targeting a teen audience notoriously difficult to pin down, the show’s arsenal of blogs, social networking profiles and podcasts – a development now referred to a ‘360-degree marketing’ by those in the know – has had executives across the land weeping with envy.

If, for example, you felt the need to get closer to the show’s young Asian character Anwar, you could check up his MySpace page. There you would not only discover his penchant for Lethal Bizzle, but would also have access to a web-exclusive video diary with the character discussing his girl problems. Head to Posh Kenneth’s page and the fan can enjoy a loving Wordsworthian ode to Jal interspersed with his signature brand of street patois.

If even then your appetite for all things Skins was still not sated, you could plug into Bebo video updates, or switch to iTunes and download the podcast presented by Daniel Kaluuya, the actor who plays Posh Kenneth who is also a writer on the show. Including phone-in questions from audience members and interviews with the cast, the Skinscast, as it’s been termed, was at one point the most downloaded podcast on the whole iTunes playlist.

Alongside the overall quality of the programme itself, it seems clear that the multiplatform ingenuity of Skins has enabled it to reach and hold onto a loyal audience in ways previous shows could only dream of. It is, in its own way, the defining televisual project of the British YouTube generation. But at a point in television where television executives and producers are increasingly heralding the possibilities brought by new media platforms, do the writers of the show ever feel their creation is being distorted by the marketing men?

“There is obviously a gulf between what the show says and how Skins is marketed,” says Lucy Kirkwood, one of the writers on the show. “But I think there’s something quite fun about the marketing. I really like this season’s advertising campaign. It captures the spirit of the show and is quite dark.” Ben Schiffer, another writer, agrees. “I think it would be really churlish of us to complain about the marketing – it brought us an audience, and that’s great.”

Shiffer however sees the significant noise made about Skins’ various multiplatform tentacles more as a generational issue than something specific to the show. “Whenever I mention Skins to people, it’s always the people who work in the media who are interested in the multiplatform stuff. They are always the people who are like ‘Skins, oh yes, it’s the big multiplatform thing and you guys have done this, this and this.’ They are the people that seem to find it so new and interesting. But for the audience I think it somehow feels natural to them. They don’t find it particularly remarkable and that’s why I think it’s successful. We’re communicating with them on a really natural level, which isn’t new or strange for them.”

Daniel Kaluuya also sees the success of the podcast he presents and the Skins blogs, Bebo and MySpace presences as being more a natural progression to suit an audience that has grown up with the Internet, rather than a novel marketing ploy. “The important thing to realise is that all the online stuff helps the fans get more into the characters. We just take the characters seriously. On the podcast, it’s not like we just say, ‘Oh, these are make-believe characters, this is a make-believe land and these things aren’t really happening. It’s a TV show that quite a few people really care about and we always take it seriously, whether it’s online or not.”

Ben agrees: “That’s why Skins is perceived to be such a success – we’re the only show to have really captured that audience. Advertisers are desperate to hit the audience that we’ve captured. And we work because we don’t condescend to them.”

In a suitably 21st century take on the creative process, the writers also recognise the possibilities media like blogs allow them for character development. While pre-Internet shows relied on scripts in the traditional manner, creating MySpace pages for the characters placed a new developmental tool into the hands of the writers.

“If you looked at Chris’ MySpace page last year, he actually became much more fleshed out because of it,” says Lucy. “You see that he likes Adam and the Ants and can find out much more about his character than would be normally possible. Skins is about a group of friends, and the whole appeal in the first series was about meeting a group of people you would have wanted to be friends with if you knew them. When you first make friends you sort of do what a MySpace page does by saying, do you like this or that, what are your top five bands? It’s like an electronic friendship. It allows you to show a side of the characters that might seem forced if it was in the show.”

Each of the writers contributes to the online features by writing blogs and video snippets for the characters, a side to the show that allows a young pool of talent to cut their teeth away from the glare of terrestrial television before graduating to penning hour-long scripts. But the writers are also quick to emphasise that they don’t see the online material being in any way less important than the show proper.

“All the online material comes from the same place as the show, so we all try and aspire to the same level,” says Shiffer. “No one ever goes, ‘Oh it’s just for the Internet so we’ll just bang it out. We’re trying to broaden out the universe of the show, rather than just providing lame ancillary storylines because we heard it was a good marketing tool.”

But are they ever worried about the potential for the online content and podcast to become gimmicky and distracting from the more serious side of the show? “The audience doesn’t view it that way,” says Shiffer. “I don’t think our audience makes any qualitative difference between watching something on MySpace and watching something on telly. It’s not worse or immediately lower-status because you watched it on the internet; it’s just the same thing.”

Jamie agrees: “The podcast did very well, so it obviously reached a lot of people who didn’t view it as a gimmick,” he points out. “All the material is well read, well commented on and discussed. It seems to do well in getting people talking about the show and contributing to it through competitions, which can only be a good thing.”

While they are rightly confident that the multi-platform approach has helped rather than hindered Skins’ aim of portraying British teenage life in a realistic but entertaining way, the first series’ pre-air marketing campaign (featuring a bunch of handsome actors looking elegantly wasted) gave some the wrong first impression. The Guardian’s TV critic Charlie Brooker for one said that the first episode had him “harrumphing like a four hundred-year-old man.”

Since, though, Brooker and many others have repented – and now recognise the greater levels of depth the writers have strived to instil into the characterisation of storylines. The series is now well-known for featuring delicate issues in its plotlines, such as anorexia, drug consumption and racial tension.

“The first ever episode did have its faults, but I think we’ve since shown we can deal with complicated issues and entertain young people,” says Jamie. Another writer on the show, Atiha Sen Gupta, agrees. “I think that’s the Skins philosophy really: taking a character that could be a stereotype, but doing it well. In series one, we had an anorexic girl but we subverted it. That gives the show its strength.”

There’s also been the odd critical voice attacking the show for glamorising drug consumption and casual sex, an argument the writers feel is unjustified. “People are going to take drugs and throw big parties whether there was Skins or not,” says Sen Gupta. This is also a point Daniel Kaluuya feels particularly strongly about. “I think it was Eminem who said something about people not being able to handle looking in the mirror and not liking what they see. Skins isn’t trying to glorify drugs; people just take them. People do drugs and have sex, so if we’re trying to write something realistic why can’t we put them in the show?”

Puritans aside, it seems more of the British television-watching public are beginning to awaken to the fact that Skins is not merely a fancy exercise in new media or empty pandering to a ‘youth demographic’, but is actually a show that could stand the test of time. On that matter Jamie, for whom the show’s characters were once merely vague ideas inside his head, is philosophical.

“I think it would be arrogant of us to assume we impact upon peoples lives in any major way, but it’s clear that this show means a lot to the people who watch it. We aren’t sure how long it will go on for, but we are defiantly going to do another series after the next. It means a lot to us, and we just want to keep it running for as long as feels right.” And with a talented and passionate gang of writers, an innovative approach to new media – and of course all those calls from Japan – Skins could probably continue for as long as they wish.

Words: Miles Johnson

Photography: John Stewardson

www.e4.com/skins