Kaya Scodelario has opened up about the prejudices she has faced in the UK acting industry.
The Wuthering Heights star, 32, shot to fame as Effy Stonem in the Channel 4 teen drama Skins alongside Nicholas Hoult, Jack O’Connell and Daniel Kaluuya after attending an open audition in 2007.
Scodelario, who grew up in a council flat in Islington with her Brazilian mother, admitted she experienced a crisis of confidence when the series concluded and walked out of an audition for a BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma full of “posh, gorgeous” girls due to anxiety.
Following Skins, Scodelario starred as Cathy in Andrea Arnold’s acclaimed Wuthering Heights adaptation in 2011 before focussing on big US franchises, including The Maze Runner and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Speaking to The Guardian, Scodelario admitted she faced fewer barriers in America than in the UK, where she knew her background would mean she’d be cast as a maid in “any period drama” she auditioned for.
In recent years, the actor has made a return to the UK, most recently starring alongside Theo James and Daniel Ings in Guy Ritchie’s hit Netflix series The Gentlemen.
“I think things have changed for the better,” she reflected. “It seems like the industry is finally catching up with the idea that a British actor doesn’t look or sound a certain way.”
It comes shortly after it was revealed in May that working class representation in the film and TV industry has plummeted to the lowest level in a decade.
Only eight per cent of creatives in the film and TV industries identified as being from a working class background, while over 60 per cent of those working in the same sector were middle or upper class, the highest level in 10 years.
Scodelario’s Skins co-star O’Connell, who was raised in a working-class household in Derby, previously told The Independent he would have to sleep rough on park benches in London in order to go to auditions.
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Skins found its cast members by visiting youth drama clubs, hosting open auditions and inviting the likes of Nicholas Hoult, who had previously starred in About a Boy alongside Hugh Grant, to read for a role.
Scodelario, who filmed scenes involving sex and recreational drug use when she was just 14 years old, revealed safeguarding “wasn’t really a thing” when she was cast in Skins.
The actor admitted the cast were “so grateful and happy” to be on the show that they just “did as we were told most of the time”.
“Nothing too awful ever happened, thank God,” she said. “But it could have, and I think that’s what’s scary about it. What’s wonderful now is that every production is aware that a sex scene is essentially a stunt, and it should be choreographed.”
