Rish Shah is all around the world, both literally and on television screens.
The British actor has just returned from a back-to-back TV premiere in Los Angeles and a family wedding in Portugal. Now, he’s settling into the breakout success of his latest project, Amazon’s Overcompensating. “Every moment I could, in between events, I was looking at what was trending on Twitter and being looped in by Benny, who has been amazing, just making sure we’re all informed with what’s happening,” Shah says. And yes, he’s seen the fancams circulating on social media: “It’s very flattering. Honestly, hats off to whoever’s making them. They’re pretty impressive.”
Shah exudes the same charm that’s drawn viewers into his character Miles, Overcompensating’s primary love interest. He says of approaching the character: “Sometimes there’s the trope of: ‘Oh, he’s the mysterious guy.’ But I wanted to bring out a little more empathy from him and to him, especially because he does hurt Benny, whether or not it’s unknowingly.”
Having gotten his start on stage and later on British television, the actor went on to book a starring role on Ms. Marvel as Kamran, alongside film roles like The Sweet East, and most recently, Joy. Despite his burgeoning success, however, Shah saw parts of himself in Miles’ awkward confusion around the social dynamics of university. “Miles, like a lot of people and like myself when I was at uni, is just trying to fit in with the right groups, and he’s just trying to find his own tribe of people that he can lean on and be open with,” Shah says. Having gone from a tight-knit group of friends in secondary school to King’s College, Shah says, “when I was at uni, suddenly everything was upside-down again. You’re having to rediscover who you can trust, essentially, and everyone wants to fit in.”
As in PAPER’s conversation with Overcompensating’s creator Benito Skinner, the concept of “toxic masculinity” girding the show’s central themes comes up again with Shah. “I’ve grown up in an environment where toxic, toxic masculinity was so prevalent in my life, in my little bubble in North London.” For Shah, to “be a small cog in this necessary change towards dissembling that world — in my opinion, it is very effectively done with this brilliant clinical comedy. I just hold that with so much pride.”
For more on Rish Shah, check out our entire conversation below.
Also be sure to check out PAPER’s cover story on Overcompensating with Benito Skinner and interviews with Mary Beth Barone and Wally Baram.
I’ve been seeing fancams of you and Benny’s character and Holmes’ character circulating on Twitter. And I was like, that’s how you know it made it.
God, I’ve been seeing a couple of them. It’s very flattering. Honestly, hats off to whoever’s making them. They’re pretty impressive. They’re pretty good.
The idea that everyone had a lot of fun making this is really prevalent among the cast. Everyone really thinks of that summer or that experience in Toronto as sort of like being in summer camp.
From the jump, from the table reads, I just knew that it was going to be something special and really powerful. We just sped through all episodes in one sitting, because it’s that addictive in a way. We barely ran off for a bathroom break. And the cadence of the show is so rapid, by the time we get towards mid season, we have all of these really vulnerable and intimate moments, and they’re difficult. But the thing is, from that very first day, Scott King, our showrunner, had just cultivated this environment in which everything was very smooth and fluid. But also, those scary moments — like for me, I can’t speak for others, but for me, myself, I have the scenes with Benny in the woods, or even swinging on vines like George of the Jungle. It was terrifying, you know, and he made all of that really, actually easy.
There’s something Scott said at the end of that table read that still resonates with me, which was just if we could all have had a friend like Benny at college, God, how much brighter our lives would have been. I fully understand that. I’ve been calling [Benny] lightning in a bottle. He brings out the best in people. And he’s got this ability to, no matter who you are on that set, you feel like you’ve been personally touched by him, and you’ve had time with him, and he just puts a smile on your face. That’s probably why it rings true what everyone’s saying. God, it was such a blast.
There’s sometimes the expectation that when you’re making a show and starring opposite of someone who’s also the creator and the writer and the multi-hyphenate on the project, that it might be intimidating, but it doesn’t sound like that was the case.
Not at all. It’s true, he balanced those different roles in a way in which I don’t know how he does it, behind closed doors. All of my scenes are with Benny. For me, that’s a great honor, because I basically get to spend all of my time with the person who created this thing.
I explained to him that, sadly, like a lot of people, I’ve grown up in an environment where toxic masculinity was so prevalent in my life, in my little bubble in North London. So for me, to be a part of this, and be opposite Benny, and be a small cog in this necessary change towards dissembling that world — in my opinion, it is very effectively done with this brilliant clinical comedy. I just hold that with so much pride.
If we could all have had a friend like Benny at college, God, how much brighter our lives would have been.
You mentioned growing up in North London. Walk me through that. What kind of experiences did you draw from in your own life as you were developing Miles as a character?
Sometimes there’s the trope of: “Oh, he’s the mysterious guy.” But I wanted to bring out a little more empathy from him and to him, especially because he does hurt Benny, whether or not it’s unknowingly. Scott, Benny and I didn’t want audiences to feel as though Miles has just led Benny on. So I hope that there’s moments where audiences realize, actually, Miles, like a lot of people and like myself when I was at uni, is just trying to fit in with the right groups, and he’s just trying to find his own tribe of people that he can lean on and be open with. And it’s not easy to do that when you’re at uni.
I went from secondary school where I felt as though I had this really great community of people, who to this day, are still my best friends, but then when I was at uni, suddenly everything was upside-down again. You’re having to rediscover who you can trust, essentially, and everyone wants to fit in. It’s scary finding those circles, and it feels like everyone has to do it so quickly as well. There’s this pressure to be like, “Well, if you don’t have your best mates by the end of Freshers Week, then what are you going to do?” And so I definitely related to that, with Miles trying to figure it out. “Should I try this society? Maybe I should do this? Or, should I go to this event?” I know exactly how it feels to want to people-please. But as I’m getting older, I’m realizing maybe you don’t have to fit in, maybe you don’t have to be surrounded by people, and there’s a lot of power in that as well.
Did you feel all those memories coming back from college while filming in Toronto?
For sure. There were all of these reminders, even in the music that was being played in the trailers, and all of these little nuggets that would just take you back. It was even in the costumes. I mean, our costume designer, Adam, was brilliant at recreating these looks that I think a lot of us had experienced also during that era. So for me, yeah, it was really easy to tap into.
I felt very at home in that experience. But at the same time, it was also just crazy to see these frat things happening. I visited friends in LA at the age of like, 20, and I went to a couple — I don’t want to admit that I’ve been to a couple frat parties at UCLA.
You guys don’t really have frats in the UK. Was it a culture shock for you coming to LA and seeing how American students get down?
I was just like, I would never do this. I’ve never experienced this. It was really interesting to also be a fly on the wall in those experiences, in those moments, all those years ago, and then to satirically mock it now, but also with love. It’s not like we’re laughing at every single aspect of it. Obviously there are moments of camaraderie or friendship, and it’s not all awful, but this is a heightened version, as you know, and audiences know.
In the show, Benny follows Miles to a film class, where Benny really starts to come into his own. When you went to university, were you already pursuing acting and film, or was that something you found yourself in?
I studied at King’s College in London, and I was doing English language and Linguistics. A lot of the people from my secondary school, my high school, had gone and done really academically inclined courses when we all went to uni. So it was strange of me to be kind of shouting, “Oh, I’m going to be an actor, and I want to be an actor.” And everyone knew since I was young, I’m obsessed with theater. That is my everything. Actually, when I was in school, theater was the place I felt most confident, most myself.
I ended up doing a couple of shows just in and around London whilst I was at uni, and I got really lucky, and it led to being signed and stuff. And I think I was a bit naive at that time thinking, “Oh, this is it. I’m an actor now, and I’ve made it,” and my parents said, “No, you have to finish your degree, and then we can see how it goes.” I just got really lucky, the timing of it worked out. So by the time I was graduating, I booked my first feature film in Atlanta, of all places. I very quickly changed my dissertation and flew out to Atlanta and did this film. I managed to finish my degree and step into what has thus far, very luckily, been a working start as an actor.
But I remember, even when I was at uni, I would do everything I could to make my degree be about film. I probably should have just studied film. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe I was too nervous. I study stylistics and poetry and analyze Riz Ahmed as Edmund in King Lear, or I did film poetry instead of normal poetry. I remember kind of inventing and reinventing myself in this short film I’d made years ago. Everything I kind of could do to make it about film, I would. And then neurolinguistics… I don’t know what to say about that. I don’t know why I did that.
From the jump, from the table reads, I just knew that it was going to be something special and really powerful.
I don’t even know what neurolinguistics covers, actually!
It’s just the way in which we process language. I was studying our brains. This makes me sound a lot cooler than I am, but I was comparing us to other non-human primates, and so I’d chosen chimpanzees. There’s this thing called theory of mind, and it’s the way in which we perceive other beings’s understanding of the world. I was looking at the capacity for language in our brains. And with chimpanzees, I just have this weird addiction. Neurolinguistics can also be how babies acquire language. There’s so many different parts to go down, but I just decided to study chimps.
You also filmed right in the middle of the Brat cultural maelstrom, with Charli being involved. Was that interesting, to be a part of this show, and then suddenly Brat is happening all around you guys?
It was insane, the timing of it. I can’t quite believe how fortunate we were, or, I guess, very strategic it was, I should say. It paid off on both ends, and I was a happy person in the middle of the Venn diagram. It was brilliant to be a part of the Brat summer. We got to go to one of Charli’s shows in Toronto, and then again, to Coachella to promote the show. It was brilliant to see her in her element and then start to grasp and understand that, “Wow, we are so lucky, and she’s just done such a brilliant job at scoring this show so beautifully.”
There’s this ethereal tone to it in the perfect moments. And then there’s moments where she’s almost trying to say something, when the character is going through these deeper, harder to express emotions, and it’s like the voice can’t come out. Her and George and The Japanese House, all of them have done such a brilliant job. I think it really sets the tone for the show. It really does. And yeah, Terrence [O’Connor[ has been fantastic at coordinating things as well. And Benny, of course, that man can make magic happen, and he has, and he will continue to do so. So I’m just praying we get to do it again.
The show ends on a cliffhanger of sorts, definitely leaving a lot of room open for season two. Is there anything that you hope for Miles, or would like to explore with Miles, in a second season?
I would love to see what that conversation looks like between Benny and Miles. It’s going to be such a difficult one for both of them in so many ways, and more so for Benny, but also Miles feeling so neglected as well. And when you’re young especially, these bonds and these friendships, they’re so formative, and so it’s important to be able to communicate even through that difficulty. I would love to see that and how their relationship and their dynamic is affected, and where it shifts to after that.
Hopefully we get to explore and delve into Miles’ family life a little bit more as well. I know he touches on it, and he mentions a step dad and the difficulties at home and the ways in which he’s overcompensating at home as well. I’m sure they’re both hilarious and heartbreaking. We’ve had so many unbelievable cameos in this first season, so I could only hope that we would have a couple of cool people wanting to line up to be Miles’ parents or brother or whatever.
Photography: Kenyon Anderson
Styling: Marissa Pelly
Makeup (Benito): Rommy Najor
Makeup (Mary Beth and Wally): Mollie Gloss
Hair (Benito): Akihisa Yamaguchi
Hair (Mary Beth and Wally): Sergio Estrada
Grooming (Rish): Kennedy Trisler
Set design: Liz Mydlowski
Photo assistant: Sahara Bibi Ndiaye
Digitech: Bob Wagoner
Styling assistant: Jordan Kennedy
Production assistant: Kaiya Lang
Editor-in-chief: Justin Moran
Managing editor: Matthew Wille
Executive creative producer: Angelina Cantú
Story: Joan Summers
Cover design: Jewel Baek
Publisher: Brian Calle