Dakota plays Franky in E4's 'Skins'

Posted by Adrian Cooper on 31 January 2012 | 0 Comments

Many of you will know that Dakota Blue Richards was a pupil at Newlands until she completed her GCSEs last summer (gaining 12 passes, mostly A*s, As and Bs) We deliberately kept very quiet about Dakota’s parallel film and television career and many of you will have seen the film version of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass (published as Northern Lights in the UK) without realising that Dakota was playing Lyra, the lead character.

Dakota dealt with all the attention and publicity in a very sensible way and she was able to switch back into being a normal member of the Newlands community with apparent ease.  I will always remember hearing one conversation where several girls were discussing what they had done at the weekend.  When it came to Dakota she said that she had been out to buy a dress to wear at her film premiere in New York; the way in which she made this sound so normal was a great credit to her.

Since then, Dakota has appeared in a couple of well-regarded television dramas, but over the summer she told us the excellent news that she had been cast as one of the new characters in the popular E4 series Skins.  The first episode, which was broadcast on the 27th January was devoted to Dakota’s character ‘Franky Fitzgerald’.  Now, I’m middle aged and largely un-reconstructed and so I’m not in the series’ target audience, but I did enjoy seeing Dakota play such an interesting character.

The series does deal with teenage issues in a frank way and so is ‘an acquired taste’ but this also makes it very popular with its true audience.   Dakota was able to enjoy the fame that came with her film role on her own terms, but this time she will be recognised wherever she goes as ‘Franky’ from Skins.  I am positive that she has the maturity and strength to cope admirably.

We are all very proud of her.

Update, January 2012; Series 2 has just started.