In “Overcompensating,” Prime Video’s newly launched comedy collection, everyone seems to be doing an excessive amount of. That’s what Benito Skinner, the creator and star of the A24-produced present, skilled in school within the mid-2010s, and why it felt like an ideal backdrop to inform a heightened model of his personal popping out story.
“Overcompensating” facilities round Benny (performed by Skinner), a closeted former highschool soccer participant turned school frat bro who spends an excessive amount of power posing as a straight man by reducing his voice and protecting his love for Lorde’s songwriting in verify. That’s the case even, or particularly, when he’s greeted by “The Alliance of Gay People and Lesbians and Bisexual People and Asexuals too even” as he makes his means round campus.
However Skinner knew there was loads of narrative potential in specializing in the thorny relationship Benny strikes up with Carmen, a woman who finally ends up being each his beard and his BFF. Solely on this telling, Carmen, performed by Wally Baram, isn’t only a supporting participant in Benny’s path towards self-acceptance.
“Naturally that story and getting to college, it’s this coming of age thing,” Skinner says. “And for so many gay people, it’s meeting these girlfriends who are creating these safe spaces — all the while they have their own s— going on. What was so interesting to me is thinking how I’m going through this whole journey inside. But so is she. She is having this whole other experience too.”
Benny (Benito Skinner) and Carmen (Wally Baram) in “Overcompensating.”
(Sabrina Lantos / Prime Video)
Baram says when she learn the present’s pilot episode, she immediately understood the place the character was coming from.
“I got the script, and within the first three pages, there’s this character — this frizzy, curly haired girl who’s kind of awkward and just can’t do the same thing that everyone else is doing,” Baram remembers. “And who, over the course of the script, is overcompensating with love. That was just so me for a really large chunk of my life, frankly.”
After assembly at orientation — and bonding over the necessity to ignore the child who insists on telling everybody he’s Amanda Knox’s cousin — Benny and Carmen fumble by way of a carried out sort of meet-cute. Wishing to put off his sexual urges for cute boys on campus and hoping to keep away from turning into a campus pariah if he doesn’t sleep with a woman on his first day at college, Benny pursues Carmen.
Over the course of the eight-episode season of “Overcompensating,” their freshman situationship shortly will get an increasing number of sophisticated. Carmen is clueless at first about why issues aren’t clicking with Benny within the bed room (or extra just like the dorm room). And the foundation of the problem might be troublesome for her to discern.
“It’s like, how could you not know he was gay? But in these relationships I’ve had with women, there was so much confusion and miscommunication through sad dishonesty,” he says. “The Carmen character was so fun to write because this girl is experiencing this on the other side being like, ‘What the f— is wrong with this guy?’ I found that for women, gay was the last thing on their list of things why these relationships weren’t working. And I’m like, ‘No, babe, that’s No. 1.’ You did nothing wrong.”
Benito Skinner on writing the connection between his character and Carmen: “I found that for women, gay was the last thing on their list of things why these relationships weren’t working. And I’m like, ‘No, babe, that’s No. 1.’ You did nothing wrong.”
(Dutch Doscher / For The Instances)
Discovering the suitable actress to nail Carmen’s charming awkwardness was a problem. Like Benny, Carmen is making an attempt to begin anew and slot in on the fictional Yates College. She’s typically pushing herself to carry out no matter normalcy appears like for a school freshman.
Carmen doesn’t nail collegespeak — “Here’s to a night we’ll never remember with the friends we’ll never forgive,” she captions her first selfie with Benny — however she’s expert at beer pong, first-person shooters and chugging drinks just like the frat boys on campus. Extra importantly, she is nice and attentive, the sort of tender girlfriend a closeted boy like Benny would naturally gravitate towards.
“I had sat with this character for four and a half, five years,” Skinner remembers. “And I watched this video, and it was this very surreal moment. She was exactly what I had in my head for Carmen. I was like, ‘OK, well, it’s her.’”
Baram’s winsome self-deprecation felt like an ideal match for the forged of this off-kilter comedy Skinner was assembling.
“When we met in person, I felt like I had little maracas out,” Baram jokes. “The energy in that room was just like, ‘Oh, hello!’ Like when two dogs meet, and their tails go up.”
“It was so two chihuahuas meet, finally,” Skinner provides.
“When we met in person, I felt like I had little maracas out,” Wally Baram says about Benito Skinner.
(Dutch Doscher / For The Instances)
“Overcompensating” hinges on their crackling chemistry. However because the season unfolds, the collection turns into an increasing number of of an ensemble piece. As Benny navigates his first semester at Yates, we spend extra time along with his sullen sister, Grace (Mary Beth Barone); her douchey frat boyfriend, Peter (Adam DiMarco); Benny’s swoon-worthy crush, Miles (Rish Shah) and Carmen’s brassy, sassy roommate Hailee (Holmes).
Collectively, they create a imaginative and prescient of school life that can make millennials cringe in recognition. The pilot, in spite of everything, opens with Britney Spears’ “Lucky” and the foundational queer movie “George of the Jungle,” starring a chiseled, loin-clothed Brendan Fraser. However it’s the needle drops all through the present that greatest seize that era and second in time. Charli XCX might get the highlight therapy — she visitor stars as herself in Episode 4 — however the deployment of a My Chemical Romance tune in a later episode made the forged notice simply how wounding and particular the writing on the present could possibly be.
“I read ‘Welcome to the Black Parade’ and it sent a chill down my spine because I thought that was private to me, alone in my room,” Baram says. “And then you put it in there and I was like, ‘OK, so we all had that moment,’ which is both good and also, wow, my plight is not special.”
“That is so true that it felt private to all of us,” Skinner provides. “Because that was also something with Mary Beth, too. When we were talking about that song, she’s like, ‘I feel this in my bones, maybe in a good and a really mortifying way.’ I hope it has a resurgence. I do think Gen Z will really enjoy that song. It feels very them.”
Barone’s cringey karaoke rendition of that emo 2006 banger resonates as a result of it captures the enjoyment (and embarrassment) that comes from being unabashedly oneself — one thing each character in “Overcompensating” grapples with to various levels of success.
“Overcompensating” hinges on the chemistry between Wally Baram and Benito Skinner.
(Dutch Doscher / For The Instances)
Skinner’s comedy excels at capturing these crippling emotions of inadequacy — whether or not you’re a closeted dude speeding a frat, a secretly emo lady making an attempt to please her boyfriend or a shy freshman determining who she could possibly be away from dwelling.
“Some of these people that come into college where they’re like, ‘I’m gonna do me no matter what, and I’m coming in here like a bat out of hell’ — I felt so in awe watching them,” Skinner says. “I was like, ‘This is so incredible that you can do this.’ Meanwhile I feel so confident in one room and in the next room I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I should not be here.’”
That’s exactly what Baram keyed into when bringing Carmen to life, in addition to listening to “Truth Hurts” by Lizzo to get into character.
“Because it reminds me of a time in my life in which I thought I was conquering the social. I was going to a party, and I thought that I was gonna, you know, get down and dirty,” she says. “But really, I was a disingenuous version of myself, and ultimately ended up feeling unrewarded at the end, no matter what I did, whether I had a successful social interaction or I failed miserably.”
“Overcompensating” broadens ideas which are central to the queer expertise — just like the closet and located households — and locations them on the coronary heart of the trendy school expertise. And, in between jokes about pink eye, Grindr dates gone fallacious and a pitch good takedown of school improv, the collection makes a heartfelt case for find out how to make the most effective out of these youth.
“To do it right, I think, is the Benny and Carmen way,” Skinner says. “It’s finding the person that doesn’t make you feel like you have to be so inconsistent with who you are and the things you actually want to do. For me it’s like, you’re bad at overcompensating when you’re with the right person.”
