What Effy Stonem Does to a Person

Skins works because it commits to something most teen shows won’t: actual mess. Drugs, love, grief, people doing things they can’t take back, all of it without the sanitizing filter of a lesson at the end. The cast is large enough that nearly every character is a mirror you can try on—but one still manages to stand apart from all of them. Tony’s little sister Effy, played by Kaya Scodelario. She carries the show’s strange emotional logic, a combination of genuine warmth and practiced cool, and she does it with a look that cuts straight through whatever scene it’s directed at.

Off screen, the seventeen-year-old was already well past the starting line: lead roles in Moon and Shank, editorial work in Teen Vogue, Nylon, Dazed & Confused, and i-D, all stark black-and-white and poses that suited her far better than glamour ever would. The rumor at the time was that she’d be written out of Skins the following year—not from any failing on her part, but because the show’s entire cast turns over every two seasons by design. A clean break. Whatever she did next would have to be interesting.

It was.