‘We were hyped-up versions of ourselves but I became a parody – that’s why I cut all my hair off in series five’
We were casting for another show, Young, Dumb and Living Off Mum, and kept coming across people in their late teens and early 20s who weren’t right for that but were charismatic, funny and led dramatic lives. They were the type of people who used to be dismissed as “Sloanes”, but they were much more interesting than that. The community was very tight-knit: they all knew and lived near each other.