Dev Patel exposes Skins’ controversial commercial filming method

Monkey Man director and star Dev Patel has revealed the controversial way Skins UK would film commercials for the show.

Though he is now known as a first time director and action movie star thanks to Monkey Man, Dev Patel was best known for his role on the edgy UK teen series Skin.

Patel, who played the sweet, always looking for a hook up Anwar, was featured on the show’s first series along with other notable stars such as Nicholas Hoult, Hannah Murray, and Daniel Kaluuya.

Skins was, and still is, seen as a very provocative show as it explicitly showed teenage characters having sex, doing drugs, and engaging in other illegal activities.

Though many believed that they were seeing was just very good acting, Patel has revealed that some of the drug use seen in the show’s promo commercials were real.

“They did these 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. It was really, really insane,” Patel told NME.

Patel also recalled a party scene where his character was “corset with the Rocawear belt, and basically my arse is hanging out” and a club scene that featured Shy FX’s song “Original Nutter,” which caused him to jump up and down like “a Kenyan dude in the Maasai Mara.”

Though the show featured a ton of drug use, it’s still a bit shocking to be know that some teens featured in the series’ iconic and chaotic promo were actually using illicit substances.