“I go right back into my old ways,” Benito Skinner says. It’s been roughly a week that Skinner, now a Los Angeles resident, has been back in New York, and the old ways of getting the potatoes at Kiki’s and “walking around listening to Lorde and just stomping the streets” have been in full effect.
Skinner goes even further back in his new series “Overcompensating,” from A24 and Amazon, about a closeted former high school jock, Benny, who arrives at college and tries to fit in during his freshman year.
Skinner is the creator, writer and star of the show, and Benny draws inspiration from Skinner’s own life experience: raised in Boise, Idaho, he attended Georgetown and didn’t come out until the end of college. “Overcompensating” is about many things, but the center of the story is Benny’s relationship with Carmen, played by Wally Baram.
“I always loved the core love story between a gay man and a woman at its center, which is Benny and Carmen,” Skinner says, from the lobby of the Nine Orchard hotel. “And that is what is brought up to me the most. At the screenings we did on college campuses I thought maybe they would lead more with the comedy, but I feel like the emotional aspects of it are hitting in a really special way that makes me so happy.”
Benito Skinner
Lexie Moreland/WWD
That’s not to say the comedy isn’t getting a reaction, though. “Some queer people are like, ‘You did not put “George of the Jungle” to open the show,’” Skinner says. “And I’m like, ‘Yes, I did.’”
Skinner, 31, first gained fame for his online persona Benny Drama, through which he did celebrity impressions and skits with his own characters. “I’ve gotten a few comments that are like, ‘Oh, I didn’t even know what he looked like,’” Skinner says of now being known as himself. “Overcompensating” began as a live show, which explored “these stories of overcompensating and being in the closet in college and high school and just feeling so disconnected from the person I pretended to be at that time that I am now.”
When he started working on the script, his mind went to a time when he recalls starting to feel like he could be himself.
“It was when I met my best girlfriend in college,” he says. “And that to me was the core of the whole show. The relationship between gay men and women feels so funny and tragic and complicated and I don’t know if I’ve seen it on screen depicted in that way. So it felt like such a rich relationship and a rich experience in my own life that I still carry with me to draw from, with the tapestry of college. I could pitch jokes for college all day.”
Benito Skinner
Lexie Moreland/WWD
While reliving some college memories naturally brought up embarrassment, Skinner ultimately found the experience therapeutic.
“I think maybe what felt cringe at first, I started to see as kind of a superpower or something that I had dominated and was like, ‘I’m able to see this and understand that it was kind of tragic at the time, but also can be so funny.’ And trying to find yourself is so funny,” Skinner says. “The things we do to be loved and what we think we’re projecting and what is actually being projected are two very different things.”
Benito Skinner
Lexie Moreland/WWD
Despite this being his first TV series, Skinner landed his dream cast, from Connie Britton and Kyle MacLachlan as his parents to cameos from Charli XCX and Megan Fox. Kaia Gerber, Mary Beth Barone, Adam DiMarco and Holmes round out the cast.
“I can’t believe we got Charlie XCX, I can’t believe we got her to do the concert and be in the scenes, and she did all that in between ‘Brat’ shows, which to me is psychotic.” Another scene features a poster of Megan Fox coming to life and giving Benny a pep talk before a potential hook up with a guy.
“Megan Fox was something that I was like, ‘this is such a pipe dream.’ And then all of a sudden I’m on Zoom and she’s saying, ‘D–k in ass, or just kissing?’” Skinner says. “And I’m like, ‘What have we made? What is happening?’”
