The TV drama’s creator was surviving on charity. Then she turned her troubled Cardiff childhood into a rollercoaster ride through school crushes, sexuality – and bipolar disorder
‘Growing up,” says Kayleigh Llewellyn, “my mum had bipolar disorder type one. So quite severe. The love you have for your mother or father is so deep-seated, there’s a contradiction: you love the person, but you also feel ashamed of them, because you’re a teenager and you don’t know any better.”
Llewellyn has poured this experience into In My Skin, an emotional rollercoaster of a TV drama about Bethan, a Welsh teenager coming of age and living a double life as she negotiates mental illness, friendships and her sexuality. Bethan’s mother Trina has bipolar disorder and is sectioned in a psychiatric ward. In an early episode, Trina says something so horrible to Bethan that I gasped out loud in my living room. At other times, the sympathy I feel for her has me weeping. But there are plenty of laughs along the way.
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