“Skins” star Megan Prescott compared her acting and sex work careers in a Cosmopolitan UK interview published Wednesday.
Notably, many celebrities have dabbled in different avenues within sex work prior to getting their big break. But Prescott chose a different trajectory.
“I’m going to profit off of my body because you taught me it was profitable,” Prescott told the outlet.
“Skins” is a controversial coming-of-age show that was criticized for its depictions of teenagers engaging in sex, drugs and chaos. Still, the show seems to have served as a career catalyst for many of its actors, including Dev Patel, Jack O’Connell, and Nicholas Hoult.
Prescott played Katie Fitch in the third and fourth seasons of the hit British show from ages 16 to 18. In the show, Prescott’s character dated someone portrayed by an actor almost twice her age.
“I had only ever had a boyfriend that was my age, and the [actor playing my boyfriend] was very nice, but he was 30,” she told the outlet. “No one had the language of ‘Are you comfortable? Do you want to talk about how this scene is going to go?’”
“Skins” aired from 2007 to 2013, but intimacy coordinators, who oversee intimate on-screen and on-stage scenes, did not gain popularity on sets until 2018, just after the Me Too movement gained traction in 2017.
Since the show’s conclusion, other “Skins” actresses have talked about their “traumatic” experiences on the show, including feeling unprotected during the show’s sex scenes.
“Skins” cast, including Megan Prescott, arriving for a preview screening and Q&A for the fourth series of Channel 4 TV show Skins, at BFI Southbank in London.
Yui Mok – PA Images via Getty Images
Prescott, now 34, said she had difficulty landing other acting gigs outside of the show because of its sex and drug content. Eventually, she began stripping.
She was reluctant initially, “But then, I realized, I literally have nothing to lose,” she said.
Prescott also told the outlet that sex work was more predictable and, in a way, offered more protections than acting at the time.
She said, “if someone talks to me badly, or doesn’t pay,” while she strips, she can “get this enormous security guard over.”
“Sex work was a huge sigh of relief because it was black-and-white. You want me to get naked for you and do a dance? OK, I know what to expect. In acting… it’s not like that. It’s very vague,” she said, adding that in acting, there was a constant fear of being replaced or blacklisted if she set up a boundary.
Prescott also talked about being an OnlyFans earner, which she said granted her the time and financial ability to be more creative.
She also spoke about the negative stigma associated with sex work.
“The hypocrisy has always stuck with me,” she said. “I was on TV, as a child, having sex scenes, on a show where a lot of people made a lot of money… if we are collectively OK with that (which whether or not we should be or not is a different story) then why can’t I, as a grown woman, take ownership of my image and sexuality back and earn three times as much?”