In My Skin: 'I hid my mum's bipolar - now I've written a show about it'

As a teenager, Kayleigh Llewellyn went out of her way to hide her difficult home life from her friends. Now she’s used her experiences to write the series she wishes existed when she was younger.

In a scene from the BBC Three comedy-drama In My Skin - which has returned for a second series - teenage Bethan runs out of her flat in a panic looking for her bipolar mum.

Scolding her drunken father for not noticing her mum slip out of the house, Bethan scours the streets frantically until she finds her mum, confused and alone at a cash point, with a queue of angry people forming behind her. Taking her arm, she gently coaxes her to come back home.

It's an uncompromising scene in the show, which swings from relatable humour to raw depictions of caring for a mentally ill parent.

"What I wouldn't have given to watch something like that, and know I wasn't alone," says Kayleigh Llewellyn, the show's writer, who describes In My Skin as "an autobiographical tale".

"When I was growing up in Cardiff, my mum had – still has – bipolar disorder, external type 1, which is the really serious kind. She'd frequently be sectioned for long spells in a mental hospital that was just a couple of minutes away from my high school," she explains.

"I used to live in fear that my friends at school would find out, and they'd ostracise me or judge us, or make fun of my mum. It was the worst feeling ever, when you're a teenager, someone making fun of your mum."

Bethan, the central character in In My Skin, is a representation of Kayleigh's teenage years juggling her school life with difficult home circumstances. Around her friends, Bethan is witty, surly and full of ideas – often talking about a novel she's writing – and exploring her sexuality as a lesbian (how Kayleigh describes herself).

But at home, she has to tiptoe around her father's moods and behaviour, never knowing how drunk he'll be. When visiting her mother in the psychiatric hospital, Bethan never knows what mood she'll be in. Sometimes she's loving, other times she's cruel and rejecting of Bethan's affection.

"I used to lead this double life and tell a lot of lies about what was going on to try and hide it," Kayleigh says. "Then, 15-ish years later, I had this realisation that the thing I thought I needed to hide was actually the key to all of my creativity.

"I got the idea to write the show because there's so few things on TV that deal with mental health, and I couldn't think of anything that dealt with teenage carers of someone suffering.

"When I was writing, I sent it out to people and suddenly realised everybody that I thought I needed to hide this aspect of my life from, actually understood.

"People were going: 'Oh my God, my dad's got bipolar, my cousin's got bipolar,' and I realised everyone's been touched by it in some way. All along I could have just been honest."

While there are plenty of funny moments across the series, the subject matter is often dark. Bethan's neglectful father, and the impact of bipolar on her mother's behaviour, are shown in all their raw reality, rather than being sanitised for the screen.

Kayleigh wrote the show like this on purpose. "That’s the TV that I like to watch, the kind of stuff that makes you laugh and cry, because that is life," she says. "That's an accurate description of humanity. As much as I love sitcoms and hard-hitting dramas, the thing that really sets me on fire to write is the kind of stuff that makes people go, 'That feels real, that feels like something I've lived.'

"And for me, that is something that dances on that line between drama and comedy, because life is both of those things."

She also found it cathartic to write the character of her father, who died a few years ago. While she describes his behaviour as abusive, she says that she didn't want to write a straightforward villain, as the reality is much more nuanced.

"I think I knew from a very young age that I didn't like the way he behaved," she explains. "It wasn't normal, and we shouldn't just accept it. I don't know why I had that foresight, because I don't know that my siblings did, or if other kids in that situation do, but I didn't like the man. I just remember being really small and thinking, 'God, I don't like you.'"

Spending time with her friends and their parents as a teen made Kayleigh realise her dad's behaviour was "really not normal", she says.

"Writing the show was like therapy in a way. I don't think, in real life, people think they're doing the wrong thing. Even writing the character that was my father, I had to come to a point that I went, 'Even though I don't like him, and I think his logic is wrong and he behaves in a despicable way, this character thinks he's right, and that he's making the right choices.'"

It was also important to her to include glimpses of affection. "He is proud of Bethan in his own way. Those moments are few and far between, but I hope people watch the series and notice the moments where he's soft towards his daughter.

"He's broken too, but he channels it in a very different way to Trina, the mother. For every way she's soft and vulnerable and kind from her brokenness, he becomes violent and lashes out."

One of the biggest achievements of the show for Kayleigh was getting her mum's approval.

"When the script was green-lit and I realised I'd have to tell my mum about it, I had a lot of agonising, hand-wringing sleepless nights, wondering if I was doing the right thing," she admits.

"My mum still suffers with bipolar and wasn't in a position to read the script, but I got my sister to read it and asked her to tell me if there was anything she was uncomfortable with, and I'll take it out. But she gave me her blessing, so that was wonderful. When the pilot aired [in 2018 – it'll form the first episode of the new series], my mum was sectioned at the time so she couldn't watch it for a few weeks.

"There were an agonising few days when she was in Wales and I was in London and she was going to watch it, so I was waiting at the end of the phone. Eventually the phone rang and it was her saying, 'I love it, I'm so proud of you.' That was just the most amazing moment."

If you've been affected by any of the issues raised, advice can be found here.

Series two of In My Skin is on BBC iPlayer now.