British-Indian actor and director Dev Patel recently appeared for an interview with NME and talked about the time he spent on the sets of Skins, a seemingly edgy teen drama TV show.
“It was really really insane,” he recalled after a throwback photo of him was shown.
The image was from one of the several wild parties Dev Patel and the other cast members attended during the shooting of the series that helped him kickstart his career.
Exploring what Dev Patel said during a recent interview about his 'Skins' experience
Dev Patel spoke exclusively to NME about his directorial debut with the forthcoming film Monkey Man and reminisced about his time on the floors of the E4 teen drama Skins between 2007 and 2008.
After a photo of him from a party scene was produced, he explained that he was “wearing a corset with Rocawear belt” with his buttocks exposed and said it was from a “crazy day.” Dev Patel further added:
“They did these [promo] commercials where they’d rent out these mansions of whatever, and then just a bunch of kids our age and older, would come and half of them were drugged off their faces, and [the crew] are like, ‘Just… have fun.’ It was insane.”
The Slumdog Millionaire star also remembered “one of the best days of shooting” when the 1994 hit jungle song Original Nuttah by Shy FX and UK Apache was played by the cast and crew.
“They had this club scene and everyone was just going mental. I remember that because they played [it] like 60 times and I was like a Kenyan dude in the Masai Mara jumping up and down,” he explained.
When asked by the interviewer whether the time spent on Skins made him aware of contemporary music and bands, Patel stated:
“I think filmmaking is just a very musical process. The guy driving you will be playing some music, then you go into the make-up trailer and if you’ve got a big transformation or they’re putting a wig on you, there’s music playing. For me, because I’m quite hyperactive, the only way I can focus is by physically blocking out the exciting people on set and listening to music.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the 33-year-old Oscar nominee also talked about his new movie, Monkey Man, which he has directed, produced, written, and acted in, and spoke about several injuries he sustained during the filming, including a dislocated shoulder, a fractured hand, and a couple of broken toes.
Previously, he told Variety, that his latest action thriller was “the most demanding thing I’ve ever done in my life.” It explores the adventures of a young man contesting in underground fight clubs while hiding his face with a monkey mask and later finding ways to avenge his mother’s death by infiltrating the city’s elite society and finding the people responsible.
For the uninitiated, Dev Patel played the role of Anwar Kharral, a British-Pakistani Muslim teenager on the two seasons of Skins. The character was specifically written for him with which he began his acting career.
Skins, which ran for seven seasons until 2013 in the U.K., revolved around teenage experiences while looking for love, friendship, happiness, and more. In 2011, the U.S. edition of the show ran for a single season on MTV before it was banned for its allegedly racy content.