Why Skye Miller From 13 Reasons Why Looks So Familiar
The topical but often controversial teen drama "13 Reasons Why" ran for four seasons on Netflix. The first season adapted the book upon which the series was based, "Thirteen Reasons Why" by Jay Asher, which followed high schooler Clay Jensen (Dylan Minnette) in the aftermath of the suicide of his classmate, Hannah Baker (Katherine Langford). Subsequent seasons of the show continued to tackle difficult topics like sexual assault, racism, drug addiction, alcoholism, homophobia, school violence, police brutality, and even HIV. The show, which was developed for TV by Brian Yorkey, was known for pushing the envelope, sometimes a bit too far.
The character of Skye Miller appears in the first two seasons of the show as a friend and later girlfriend of Minnette's Clay. In the second season she is diagnosed with bipolar disorder and breaks up with Clay after entering a mental health facility, telling him she's moving out of state and needs to let him go. The character is portrayed by actress Sosie Bacon, the daughter of well-known actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick. But being one degree from her famous father probably isn't why you recognize her. Here is where you've seen Sosie Bacon before.
Sosie Bacon got her start with mom
Although "The Closer" was technically not Sosie Bacon's first acting job, her role on the show is what really kicked things off for her as an actress. The TNT crime drama starred her mother, Kyra Sedgwick, as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson, and Bacon portrayed Charlie, the niece of her character. She snagged the role after James Duff, a producer on the seven-season series, saw her performance as a younger version of Sedgwick's character in "Loverboy," the 2005 film directed by Bacon's father, Kevin. Although her parents were not eager to have their daughter follow in their footsteps and go into acting, Duff persisted.
"I had a story to tell that required a sixteen-year-old (who had to bear at least a passing resemblance to Kyra)," recalled Duff in a blog post for TV Guide. "And even though I had been told no way, I thought, 'Well, I always had a summer job when I was growing up,' and 'Who better than Sosie, especially if we write it with her in mind?'
Bacon's parents eventually relented and she went on to portray Charlie in four episodes of the show.
Sosie Bacon then screamed for MTV
From 2015 until 2016, Bacon had a small recurring role in MTV's horror anthology series "Scream," based on the hit slasher franchise of the same name. She appeared briefly in the first season as Rachel Murray, the girlfriend of Bex Taylor-Klaus' Audrey, who attends an all-girls Catholic school and is the victim of bullying, which has resulted in her having suicidal thoughts. She is killed in the Season 1 episode "Hello, Emma," after a video of Audrey and Rachel kissing has gone viral. Her body was later staged to make it look like a suicide, though it is eventually discovered she was murdered.
Bacon briefly reprised the role in the show's second season, appearing in the episode "Happy Birthday to Me" as a hallucination experienced by Audrey. And although the character is referenced in subsequent episodes and appears in video footage, this is the last time Bacon actually appears on screen as the character.
She lived in the Here and Now
After her role on "Scream," Sosie Bacon appeared in a number of shorts and took on a few guest roles on television shows like "Aquarius" and "On Hiatus With Monty Geer." In 2018, things started to change when Bacon landed a high-profile role on Alan Ball's HBO series "Here and Now." The series starred Tim Robbins (who starred opposite Bacon's father in "Mystic River") and Holly Hunter (who appeared in "End of the Line" with her father) as the parents of a multi-ethnic family living in the Pacific Northwest and tackled topics of race and identity in the current American climate.
Bacon portrayed Kristen Bayer-Boatwright, an introverted high school student and the only biological child of Hunter's Audrey and Robbins' Greg, who had previously adopted children from Vietnam, Colombia, and Liberia. Unfortunately for Bacon, "Here and Now" received poor reviews—it has just a 24% rating on Rotten Tomatoes—and thus lasted just one season on HBO.
Sosie Bacon continued to work with Netflix
In 2019, after wrapping her two-season stint on "13 Reasons Why," Bacon extended her relationship with Netflix when she appeared in the streaming service's romantic-comedy film "The Last Summer" opposite KJ Apa ("Riverdale") and Maia Mitchell ("The Fosters"). The movie details the lives of an interconnected group of teens in the summer before they all part ways and head off to college. In the film, Bacon portrays Audrey Jarvis, a working-class teen who takes a summer job as a nanny for a wealthy woman in order to pay for college after being rejected from her top schools due to less-than-stellar grades. The job, which involves caring for a child actress named Lilah (Audrey Grace Marshall), eventually leads Audrey to discover she has a natural talent for working with children, a revelation that puts her on the path toward taking a position with Teachers Without Borders rather than pursue a more traditional collegiate education.
Sosie Bacon earned her prestige cred in 2021
In 2021, Bacon had a small recurring but crucial role in the critically acclaimed limited series "Mare of Easttown" opposite Kate Winslet, Jean Smart, and Evan Peters.
The seven-part HBO series features Winslet as Mare Sheehan, a detective investigating the death of a teen girl in a small town outside of Philadelphia. Bacon appeared in the series as Carrie Layden, the former girlfriend of Kevin, Winslet's character's late son, and the mother of her grandson, Drew. A recovering drug addict, Carrie first appears in the second episode. She has recently gotten sober and is hoping to gain full custody of her son, something Mare is obviously vehemently against, which leads her to planting heroin in Carrie's car in an effort to blow up her custody case.
In the series finale, it is revealed that Carrie has actually begun using drugs again and drops her custody case when returning to rehab, thus allowing Mare to remain Drew's guardian.