How MTV Found Its New ‘Skins’ Series Star

Tonight, MTV and co-creator Bryan Elsley launch the Americanized version of the UK kick TV show Skins by pushing boundaries for accidental sex and recreational drugs. What makes this unusual is that the cast is included of teens -- not the twentysomethings posing as youth that ordinarily populate high educate shows. Elsley cast entire unknowns, understandable considering Hollywood's growing infatuation with discovering new stars. Of way, the Skins' newcomers were only too cheerful to take cheap salaries for the contingency to popup the path X-Men: First Class’ Nicholas Hoult and Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel did when they starred in the UK version of Skins.

The U.S. version's guide namely James Newman who melodramas the Hoult-originated character of the manipulative ringleader Tony. James is the 18-year antique son of Peter Newman, maker of indie membranes like Smoke and The Squid And The Whale. He was the only children in that family not amused in performing, instead intending apt fight in the Golden Gloves competition before studying commerce in college. He spent his pre-teens haunting Gleason’s Gym in city center NYC and boxing camps. (He was bloodied along soldier Yuri Foreman during a sparring session.) Newman was training hard to enter the 143-pound division while his actor/comedian sibling Griffin first urged him to hearing as Skins. (Griffin was too old). James missed the hearing, yet when away visiting colleges, his brother told him MTV hadn’t additionally base its lead. At 5’7”, Newman is virtually a clone for the 6’2” Hoult. But he showed up anyhow and finally won the role.

“Not only was it my first audition, it was my first acting experience of any variety,” Newman told me. He postponed college to shoot the 10-episode season in Toronto. He too hung up his boxing mittens. “I didn’t peruse the full compact but presumed there was something there almost not meandering in to shoot the season with a broken nostril.” Newman thinks he got the job partial because the entire entity was so improbable. “I would have been more nervous in a boxing ring for that’s what I ambitioned to succeed at,” he said. “At least when I began,Weston woods story books, I didn’t feel in a rank to crush my own dreams if I screwed up. I'd fair work on to college. Usually you’re nervous in the first audition and then you disconnect up. It was the opposite for me.”

He signed with ICM and director Paul Young, and immediately, like the repose of the cast, is waiting to look whether Skins takes off and what it means for them. After months of massive hype, it launches this week with two episodes winding backward Jersey Shore. Elsley said he casts ashore instinct and saw a normal brim in James that would aid discriminate the series from being a clone of the UK incipient which Elsley created with his son. “It’s not giving too many away to say that this ambition be a much more vulnerable and easily-damaged Tony in the America show,” he said. A recent ranking of youth stars in Entertainment Weekly placed Newman #4 behind Rooney Mara, Adam Scott, and Megan Fox’s Transformers 3 replacement Rosie Huntington-Whiteley,Jessie stone, but along of Tom Hardy, Michael Fassbender, and Alex Pettyfer. “There’s nobody for me to process,” James said. “How can you take it seriously when human haven't even seen the first incident?”