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"So, the fifth series of Skins is over, but never fear - the gang will be back next year! Dakota Blue Richards previewed the finale for us earlier this week, but to wean you off the show gently we also asked her some questions about what happened in the episode and what it&amp;#039;s been like appearing in Skins. Read on to find out what she had to say about Matty and Franky, &amp;#039;Minky&amp;#039;, and why she wants &amp;quot;horrible things&amp;quot; to happen to Franky in the future... First things first - why do you think Franky pushed Matty away in the woods? &amp;quot;It was very ambiguous - that&amp;#039;s what they wanted it to be. They want Franky to be one of those people where you&amp;#039;re never really sure what&amp;#039;s happened to her in the past and how she is the way she is and what&amp;#039;s going to happen to her in the future. I think that&amp;#039;s the important part - if you know the past you can guess the future. But there are suggestions that perhaps the experience reminded her of something very dark that happened in her past although they were never even particularly clear with me what that might have been. I think that that&amp;#039;s actually not what she wanted and it&amp;#039;s definitely not what she wanted from [Matty]. She wants to be loved and she wants to be cared for and she wants to feel like a normal person, but she doesn&amp;#039;t want to give of herself in that way, at least not then, at least not to him. She will at some point. She will find a time when she&amp;#039;s comfortable and I&amp;#039;m sure they&amp;#039;re going to look at that in the second series because it would be quite a big development for her. I just think it&amp;#039;s not right. Nothing about it is right. I probably had a biased opinion because it was me but watching it, I felt very uncomfortable. I think you can tell that&amp;#039;s just not how it&amp;#039;s supposed to be. In theory everything&amp;#039;s right, but in practice everything&amp;#039;s wrong - really wrong.&amp;quot; What was your favourite moment in the last episode? &amp;quot;My favourite moment got cut out! There was a kiss between Mini and Franky, which was just really funny to shoot. It was at the beer fight bit, when we were all running around and it was the middle of winter and all this wind was blowing everywhere and we were all freezing cold and covered in sticky beer and then they were like, &amp;#039;OK - kiss!&amp;#039; It was really funny. Me and Freya [Mavor] were both well-humoured about it. I thought it was going to look really cool, especially because a lot of people are holding out for &amp;#039;Minky&amp;#039;, as they call it! It&amp;#039;s been everywhere... It&amp;#039;s really funny. Every time in the &amp;#039;next time on Skins&amp;#039; bits there&amp;#039;s a bit with me and Freya, everyone just erupts like, &amp;#039;Oh my God, maybe they&amp;#039;re really close in the next episode, maybe they&amp;#039;ll become best friends&amp;#039;. I think the fans would have loved [the kiss] but apparently it just didn&amp;#039;t work. Or maybe they wanted to save something for the next series... We&amp;#039;ll see.&amp;quot; Were you surprised that people were rooting for Minky? &amp;quot;Yeah! I could understand Matty and Franky, because I think that&amp;#039;s a relationship that&amp;#039;s played on right from the beginning. But I kind of thought that you would either love Mini and hate Franky or love Franky and hate Mini right up until the very, very end. But ever since the first episode, everyone was like, &amp;#039;No, they&amp;#039;re perfect together&amp;#039;. I think it&amp;#039;s because people love Kathryn [Prescott] and Lily [Loveless] from the last series, the Naomily thing. I love all these nicknames!&amp;quot; The nickname for Matty and Franky would be Manky though. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s what I was thinking! It&amp;#039;s either Manky or Fatty and neither of those are particularly nice! But no, I think it&amp;#039;s because everyone really loved Naomi and Emily from series three and four and they wanted another relationship like that this series.&amp;quot;  Do you think Skins is a realistic portrayal of teen life? &amp;quot;I think if you took a group of eight teenagers and picked out the most exciting, dramatic, crazy parts of each of their lives and put them all together in episodes, you might almost have Skins - if they were a bunch of really cool teens. My life is definitely not like Skins. My life is go to school, come home, go to bed. I should probably be trying to make myself sound a bit cooler than that! But I think it&amp;#039;s realistic - you can see yourself in the situations. Even if they&amp;#039;re not exactly the same as they are on TV you can see how they could be compared to something that&amp;#039;s happened to you. That&amp;#039;s what I&amp;#039;ve always loved about Skins. It&amp;#039;s really fun as well.&amp;quot; Do you think this series has been more light-hearted than the last series? &amp;quot;The last series got quite dark and everyone was quite shocked by it, especially towards the end. With this series I think they just wanted to make it a bit more light-hearted, just more easy watching, a happy show. Although it does have its intense moments as well. Who knows what they&amp;#039;re going to do with series two?&amp;quot; What do you want to happen to Franky next series? &amp;quot;For her character I really would like her to become comfortable within the group and open up a lot and feel more okay with herself, because I think she&amp;#039;s been through a lot and I think because she&amp;#039;s so unusual, people kind of treat her as an experiment. They treat her as a bit of a novelty and I think that&amp;#039;s unfair because I think she really just deserves to be loved and appreciated. She shouldn&amp;#039;t change either, but people need to change their opinion about her. I think that&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s so striking about her - she&amp;#039;s not like every other person. In the beginning you could see that they took it as a bad thing, but actually it&amp;#039;s not at all - it&amp;#039;s what makes her more loveable.&amp;quot; As an actress, what would you like to happen to Franky? &amp;quot;As an actress, I would love really horrible things to happen to her! Just because it would be fun to play. So something really dramatic. Not as dramatic as getting killed - that would be a bit morbid - but I would love it if she went off and did some really crazy fun stuff like the last episode in the woods. That was so much fun because they got out of Bristol and went and did all these crazy things and were exploring, and I thought that was really interesting and really fun to do as an actor.&amp;quot; How have fans responded to Franky? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve had a lot of good things about Franky which I&amp;#039;m really happy about. I think she&amp;#039;s very different to anyone they&amp;#039;ve ever had on Skins before and people are really embracing that, which is great. I&amp;#039;ve heard some funny things. I saw a really good quote about my episode, just saying how representative it is of all these people who don&amp;#039;t fit in and don&amp;#039;t feel like a part of something. The quote was from Louie Spence and I nearly died because I&amp;#039;m in love with him! All the comments I&amp;#039;ve seen are so supportive and it really means so much to me and I&amp;#039;m so grateful and appreciative. I was worried that she would be too weird and too different and people just wouldn&amp;#039;t get it but they have and they&amp;#039;re so open. I&amp;#039;m just really glad that by doing something that I love I&amp;#039;m able to make other people happy and to make them feel represented and have something that they can really connect with as well.&amp;quot; And what&amp;#039;s the feedback been like for the show in general? &amp;quot;They were quite harsh on us at first. When they first saw our pictures we got quite a few people saying, &amp;#039;Urgh, they look like they stepped off the special bus and they&amp;#039;re mingers&amp;#039;, and we were like, &amp;#039;Oh God, they&amp;#039;re going to hate us!&amp;quot; But since the actual episodes are out people have just been really nice about it. Obviously they&amp;#039;re not going to like everything all the time but I think if you can appeal to some people then you&amp;#039;ve done a good job.&amp;quot; Have you enjoyed this series of Skins? What do you want to happen next? Leave your comments below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/skins/interviews/a308474/more-skins-chat-with-dakota-blue-richards/>