Benito Skinner has quite a bit to be thankful for these days. The internet star turned Hollywood multi-hyphenate has a buzzy new TV show out at Amazon, Overcompensating, which already has the mark of a breakout success: Gay guys on the internet have been fighting about it for weeks now. Most importantly though, he’s joined an exclusive hall of fame: Benito Skinner got butt naked for PAPER. “Baby, we did it. We did it.”
Of course, Skinner is no stranger to being the most talked-about person on the gayer sides of the internet. After finding his footing in the front-facing video comedy wave, Skinner’s viral impressions of just about everyone spun into a 2018 stage show at the now-closed Carolines on Broadway, also called Overcompensating, and a bona fide acting career, having starred in Search Party, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Queer as Folk and, now, his very own TV show. Thankfully, he had some help. “I worked with Scott King, who was the showrunner on this, and is such a mentor to me, and is gay. I just felt safe,” Skinner says. “And I felt safe with A24 and Amazon. At each moment, I just trusted my gut.”
Never forget, though, that the closeted jock struggling to maintain a sheen of perfection is also the show’s writer, creator and executive producer. It’s a duality he maintains quite effortlessly, according to his co-stars. Rish Shah, who plays opposite Skinner as Miles, says: “He balanced those different roles in a way in which I don’t know how he does it, behind closed doors.” Playing opposite the show’s creator was a “great honor” to Shah, since “I basically get to spend all of my time with the person who created this thing. And it’s his story, first and foremost, and now it’s a lot of people’s, I’m sure.”
Sitting down with Skinner on the eve of the premier, as friends and family and press assemble in Tinseltown, his anxieties are startlingly down to earth — banal, even. “I’m more having this weird thing where I’m like… my boyfriend’s cousins are going to see my butt. Someone asked me that recently. ‘What do you think of Terry’s family seeing you naked?’ I’m like, “Woah, that one hadn’t really hit yet. But here we are.” Terry, for the record, is Terrence O’Connor, acclaimed creative director for the internet’s favorite pop stars (Skinner’s too, he’d add.) I smile, not because of the “cinematic universe” — as best friend and co-star Mary Beth Barone puts it — around Skinner. Simply, I note the same hints of nervous preoccupation behind this effusive performance also seen in Benny the character.
Beyond conversations about his bare ass, writer turned lead actress Wally Baram, who plays Carmen, the fateful girl on the receiving end of Skinner’s faux jockiness, describes her co-star as fearlessly collaborative. “I think it’s one of the scariest things you can do with something that is your baby,” Baram says, “and he really trusted the people around him and brought in their visions to his vision.” Barone agrees: “We all felt like we really needed to show up for Benny and prove that he made the right choice in trusting us. Some of the days I was tired, or I was in my feelings, with personal things going on. And it was like, well, we have to bring our A-game for Benny.” Echoing Baram, she also finds that “Benny challenges me creatively, and he knew that I could do it. If I have Benny’s faith in me, I just need to physically be there and the rest will pour out of me.”
Baram, now a multi-hyphenate herself alongside so many others in the cast, ushered into the limelight hand-in-hand with Skinner, adds: “Working with him has been inspiring — in a way that is scary, because you realize the ceiling on all of the things you can be. He brings so much energy and so much creativity and a lot of integrity to and kindness to all of his interactions. It makes you want to ask more of yourself.” According to Shah, “There’s something [King] 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.”
In their own ways, the cast found resonance in Skinner’s glittering diorama of teen angst and social confusion, based in large part on his own experiences as a closeted Georgetown student. Baram admits: “I don’t know that I was socially outcasted, but I was definitely weird my whole life. And I definitely didn’t fit in with friend groups my whole life.” Growing up, “comedy was my way to connect with everyone. To this day, that’s still what it means to me. It’s comforting to speak a truth or a shame or something, and have other people validate or connect with that truth.”
Barone is somewhat self-effacing when talking about her contributions to the ensemble and writing, referring again back to her best friend’s genius. But her comedy special includes a segment on her catholic upbringing, and when pressed, she expresses that she did carry that experience into the role: “100 percent. I think, especially as a college student, I had such a limited worldview.” Her character, a similarly repressed Grace, was a vessel to channel that through. “I showed up at school a Catholic Republican, and so my mind was completely blown in college,” she says. “I was exposed to all these new people and new ideas. The classes, as much as they were boring at times, really radicalized me in a way.”
If Overcompensating is about the struggle to break through the walls we put around ourselves, then life imitates art, Skinner having done the same in the lead-up to filming. Having made a name for himself playing extreme caricatures of recognizable faces, the expected wigs and skits fans came to expect from him were noticeably absent on his feeds this last year. He says he isn’t sure whether or not he intentionally stepped back or stripped away the characters to find his own way. “It felt so scary to me, I don’t even know what the original choice was, to be honest, or why this felt like what I needed to do,” he says. “But I’ve been trying to find out why I am the way I am, and why coming out felt so complicated to me, and why I still feel so much guilt and shame for not coming out sooner.” Along the way, he was named one of The Hollywood Reporter’s most influential social media personalities. There’s irony in that contrast. “I think in approaching it, I really was like, I want to pour myself into this as much as possible,” he laughs. “I hope that I have made so many videos, if you really need one, you can scroll. Daddy has to go make a TV show.”
Skinner also says that had he divided his attention, he might have found the safety of his characters easier than getting “butt naked” for the world. “I think if I would have put on the Deliverance Richards wig, I would have been like: ‘Oh, well, this is easier. This does feel pretty fucking good,’” he says.
Skinner’s life and career is full of these contrasts; the “overcompensating” college kid with a fake-deep voice transformed into a vivacious comic bedecked in wigs. It’s like a story out of a Glee episode, which is apt, considering he’s an outspoken product of the Glee generation (and Overcompensating certainly doesn’t hold back with Glee references, either.). As Skinner sees it: “We’ve all been infected by this same thing, which is that we truly think that masculinity is a saving grace, is safety, is something to be desired, is something that will make you loved. That’s a part of all of these storylines.”
Below, Skinner talks about forgiving himself, writing with his friends in mind and going back to college.
Also be sure to check out our full interviews with Wally Baram, Rish Shah and Mary Beth Barone.
You must be in the gauntlet of press and stuff right now!
Tomorrow is just the premiere. My family comes in today, and my boyfriend’s family. It feels very real. I’ve waited for this day for a really long time, so I’m trying not to judge myself because it’ll feel like a fever dream, and it’ll go by so fast, I’ll forget everything. But I’ll process all of this in about 20 years. I can’t wait.
You’re gonna do an actors on actors, and be like: “Remember when Overcompensating came out? It feels so long ago now.”
Exactly. I think it was so easy, like absolutely, it was nothing. It’s so easy to make a TV show.
I wonder if they’ll get better lighting for those Variety’s “Actors on Actors” by then.
They’re gonna have to. I don’t think I can pull up if they’re doing that overhead shit. Come on!
Overhead, and in such low seating! You never get a good angle in a really low armchair.
The outfits look terrible! It’s a lot of ankle that you didn’t even want. I don’t know… dreams! It’s hard to be an actor. Watch that be the quote.
You get put through the ringer on set and then you have to sit in low armchairs and talk to people under bad lighting. It’s the worst.
Luckily, I love talking about this show, and I had so much fun on this shoot. I really can’t believe I got butt naked for PAPER, but let’s go!
You join a long legacy of people who’ve gotten butt naked for PAPER. Congratulations, welcome to the hall of fame.
I need to call Orville and be like, “Baby, we did it. We did it.”
You did it Benny, you’re gonna be the next butt naked person on PAPER.
Heaven! Pinch me.
I want to ask, you’ve got your parents coming into town, and of course we’ll get to the good questions later. But off the top of my head, have they seen any of the show?
They’ve only seen the trailer, and they’ve seen some photos of Connie [Britton] and Kyle [MacLachlan] — in a way, kind of drag versions of them. They are so excited, and I think they know that the show is my life, but it’s also so not. But I think they don’t necessarily understand the scale of it, that it really is a full TV show.
I’d probably spontaneously combust if my parents sat through a scene like the one with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.
My mom’s face will be kind of glazed over. But she’ll then, at the end, be like, “You’re all so cute!” That’ll be her takeaway. I’m more having this weird thing where I’m like, “My boyfriend’s cousins are going to see my butt.” Someone asked me that recently. “What do you think of Terry’s family seeing you naked?” I’m like, “Woah, that one hadn’t really hit yet.” But here we are.
You’ve been working on some variation of the script as far back as 2018. How are you feeling now, being at the finish line and realizing this dream?
I was watching Holmes (shoutout my baby, Holmes) in Another Simple Favor and the trailer popped up. You could click it, and it had a home page. And I was like, “Oh, my god, they’re really gonna upload this thing.” And then someone tagged me in a thing where I was dubbed in German. Like, this is huge. I think doing the college screenings eased me into the show coming out because the reception was so warm, and it was so much fun to hear real laughter and gasps. Also, some of my babies in the audience were just going crazy to a point where I’m like, “Oh yeah, let’s get this out. It’s time.”
It’s crazy — we’re the same age — to think about going back to college now and thinking how miserable of a time it was, to how much more miserable it must be in 2025. All the pressure of college but ChatGPT and TikTok exist.
And also, this thing is on the menu where you could post a get ready with me every morning, and that’s your career. Like, that’s fabulous. We all had such a weird, cathartic, trippy experience with this. One night, Holmes and me, we were doing the pre-game scenes from episode two, and my dorm room was literally brick-by-brick rebuilt from college, and it looked exactly like my dorm room, and I was like, “This is so fucking weird. What is going on?” But being able to laugh at it helped understand it as an experience that was both really beautiful, really devastating and disgusting. Something I would never go back to unless it was for this, like an Amazon show. A24 was the only way I was going back into a dorm.
Only A24 is going to get me back into the university system.
Being able to laugh at it — there was something very cathartic about it.
I’m loving that we’re getting another college show, because they hold such a special place on TV. Greek, right? When you were considering a more longform project based on your life, did you always know it would be set in college, or was that something that came about naturally?
I didn’t know I was going to do school. And actually, The Sex Lives of College Girls wasn’t out yet when I started writing it. I’m glad it wasn’t out yet, because I would have thought, “Oh, I can’t do it,” you know? Which is so strange given how many high school things we have. College isn’t that.
Like, we don’t have more Secret Lives of American Teenagers, do we?
You know what? We might. But I just found the time to be so inspiring. I looked at this idea of “overcompensating” that I was touring and thinking about when I maybe wasn’t overcompensating as much — when I met this woman in college who I felt like I didn’t have to do this performance in front of, and then thinking about how that story could extend outside of just my experience being in the closet and meeting this woman. College was just this amazing arena for exploring identity.
I mean, I don’t think I have ever been able to recall the taste of Trader Joe’s vodka of the gods in my mouth quite like when I was watching this show. I could hear Selena Gomez’s “Birthday” playing in the background over someone’s shitty speaker.
Season two, season two. I’m taking that, sorry. We left out one hit.
It’s yours!
Did you do flavored vodka?
I had a girl who worked at Starbucks who’d bring those flavor shots and put them into the vodka. She’d be like, “It’s a cocktail!”
That’s kind of artisanal, when you think about it. That’s Starbucks Reserve.
The 2014 version of those girls that pour Crystal Light into their giant cups of water. In season 2, you need to get that woman that gays love to post on Twitter where they’re like, “She’s running that Starbucks like the Navy.”
Wait, love. Easy, done. Done!
I’ll get an assistant producer credit if we’re really feeling generous.
We’ll have you in the writer’s room!
You’ve been playing so many different caricatures over the course of your career, and obviously you’ve branched into acting now, before Overcompensating. Specifically, thinking of these characters though, did it feel weird to write a show based on your life, however dramatized, and stripping away all the characters and parts you play to just be yourself?
It felt so scary to me, I don’t even know what the original choice was, to be honest, or why this felt like what I needed to do. I’ve been trying to find out why I am the way I am, and why coming out felt so complicated to me, and why I still feel so much guilt and shame for not coming out sooner. What do I want to say with my work? If I was going to make a TV show, it needed to feel different. You’re already getting me as characters on the internet, let’s do something different. As I looked to myself for something that felt scary and inspirational, I was like, “Okay, what if I’m just me?” That’s so scary! Because if people hate it, then they hate me. Can I live with that?
Now I can, because I was able to give myself some grace and forgiveness in making the show for not coming out sooner and for doing some really sad things to remain in the closet and hurting a lot of people along the way, whether that be women or gay people that I did that too, and feeling like I let people down. I felt like, if I’m going to make this show that feels like a true coming-of-age, I want people to truly see themselves in it. If I’m going to do that, I have to do that with myself, too. That’s what felt really inspiring to me — and scary. Every day on set, I was like, “I can’t believe I’ve done this to myself.”
I hate to use this word healing because it’s so loaded, but did it feel healing for you?
Totally. Not trauma! “It’s about trauma… It’s about family trauma.”
Did it feel like you were closing a loop in some way on all of those experiences? Were able to put them to rest, in a way?
Yeah. Obviously there’s more I want to say within it, but absolutely. I forgave myself for not coming out. One thing I wanted to say — obviously there are many things I wanted to say in the show — this feeling is universal, of hiding who you are and putting on so much to protect yourself. Maybe we can stop judging each other for it, because, sadly, we’ve all been infected by this same thing, which is that we truly think that masculinity is a saving grace, is safety, is something to be desired, is something that will make you loved. That’s a part of all of these storylines.
Desiree [Akhavan], who directed some of the episodes, including the seventh one — we were doing “The Black Parade” karaoke with Mary Beth, and she was like, “You know, this is your best friend. I’m the director, but if there’s anything you’d like to say to your friend, you wrote this. Go talk to her.” And it was just this really beautiful thing. I got to just have this conversation with Mary Beth, where I’m like, “Every time someone said something fucking awful about you, about your body, about how you should be, these men you’ve been in relationships with, fucking let them have it to this fucking iconic fucking anthem. Go!” And she just went crazy. That to me was so inspirational. I’m seeing all of these characters do that and just let it out. Let it rip.
To use a colloquialism, I want to hold space for Mary Beth in this conversation.
Absolutely, we must.
What was it like to write a show with your best friend, let alone star in it?
I grew up idolizing Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Maya Rudolph, Kristen Wiig. Bridesmaids is still one of my favorite movies of all time. I saw this as being on the menu: If you write a show, you’ve got to bring your friends in it. It’s more complicated than that, obviously, but I have always been so inspired by Mary Beth. It’s funny. Someone’s like, “You wrote parts for your friends.” And I’m like, “I don’t think I ever approached it like that.” I wrote it for this comedian that I find to be a muse of sorts, a huge inspiration. The fact that she is stoic in her comedy is so different from me, and it was really disorienting at first, because I’d be on set and pictured her in this role forever. And then when she showed up in Toronto, coming from the hair salon, and she was blonde, I was like, “Holy shit, it’s real. This is crazy.” I’m like, “Oh my god, they’re letting us do this.” I’m so unbelievably proud of her, and I feel so proud to have been able to write something that I think shows off how genius she is.
There was a time when you couldn’t scroll Instagram without seeing your characters in the For You page. In the last year, you scaled back on the characters and the skits, and I read about how you wanted to do that going into this show. While you’re scaling back, The Hollywood Reporter names you one of the 50 Most Influential Social Media Personalities. How did you handle that, trying to branch into this next phase of your career, creating a TV show and starring in it, while also being known on social media for this different side of yourself? Was there a duality to that experience? Or struggle?
Absolutely. I felt like I was letting people down. This is something that a lot of queer people feel, where we enter rooms and we’re like, “If I don’t have the entire season outlined and everything ready to go and don’t only use my first takes, I have failed all of you, and you are going to take away this show from me.” So in approaching it, I really was like, “I want to pour myself into this as much as possible.” I have made so many videos, if you really need one, you can scroll. Daddy has to go make a TV show. I’ve been given this opportunity, and I know that it is an insane privilege that I have. People are entrusting me, and I’m entrusting myself to tell this story, right? And to have queer people see this on screen and be like, “Yes, George of the Jungle. Yes, handshake. Yes, falling for someone who can’t fucking love you.” God damn it! It just felt like I had to take a beat.
I really like to focus on something, and I hyperfixate. If I would have put on the Deliverance Richards wig, I would have been like, “Oh, well, this is easier. This does feel pretty fucking good.” And it’s not that those voices don’t leak out. I mean, I still pitch my boyfriend jokes all the time. But I think it was wanting to fully commit in every way to this. I was going back in time in a way. The podcast also really helped in a lot of ways, with me still being out there and having so much fun with Mary Beth, and still being able to joke about things and talk about it. Making videos is a lot of fucking work. What’s that meme that’s like, “You try being an influencer for a day. Michaela!” So iconic. Watch as people say that about this, but it’s like, I would edit, I would film, I would do it all. At the end of the day, I could then go into a writer’s room and give them everything that I needed to give.
It’s interesting, too, because when I was talking to Wally, she said that she would describe working with you as being very collaborative, and letting people really go for it. How did you go about creating the on-set environment as a first-time show creator? Specifically, Wally said that this is your baby you’ve been carrying around, and you really trusted everyone with it.
At a certain point, I loved the script so much, and I was so proud of it. I worked with Scott King, who was the showrunner on this, and is such a mentor to me, and is gay. I just felt safe. And I felt safe with A24 and Amazon, and at each moment, I just trusted my gut. With the actors, that would be a conversation: “So, are you okay with me trying this?” And I’m like, “Yes, I picked you for a reason, surprise me.” I’ve sat on this script for eight years. I would love to see this scene in a new light, and also allow myself to do that, too. As an actor, I want to be able to surprise my castmates as well, and to be fully with them, and to allow and to also show them that I’m playing within the scenes, too. I’m trying to find the honest thing that we want to say, and I chose brilliant actors who I’m obsessed with. The three female leads in this are stand up comedians and writers. What a fool I would be to limit that.
It’s trusting your gut. There were these little tricks I had in my brain in meetings where, if people loved the things that I felt were so special about the show, that it felt like the right fit. Then, with directors, with actors, with Wally, it was like she just loved Carmen and understood why this woman was doing these things. She knew also how special she would be in the show, and what she would mean to gay people, and what that relationship means to gay people and to women, too, who feel like love is the only way — that the proximity to someone else is the only way to have self-worth. That was also a thing, too, picking people that I think weren’t judging the college kids, who were seeing humanity in them. Some of it was scary, but I just went to my trailer and took a 10-minute Calm meditation if I really started to freak out. It’s hard to trust people, to let it go.
What’s your go-to Calm meditation?
There’s one I do, the Daily Calm. But it’s funny, I listened to Headspace when I was in college, so I can’t listen to it anymore, because the guy’s voice actually triggers anxiety in me. All love to him, I think his name’s Andy. I’m so sorry, but it takes me back in a way that a scent does. Like, I have to run for the hills. But Claire Weekes, I’m obsessed with her. I listen to her old audio tapes sometimes. It was that, or I would blast the Brat remix album in my trailer, because we were shooting during that. Or, how many times can I play “Diet Pepsi” on a day where I have to do a scene? That was a challenge that I gave myself. Let’s see if I can numb my brain with music. And it worked a lot of the time.
I was going to say: use code “Calmpensating” at checkout.
They should have us do a reading! I give you more anxiety, if you want more.
There’s a Lorde joke in the pilot that made me howl, because it’s so specific. It’s something that could only have happened in real life. Walk me through that joke.
It was so funny, because I wrote that joke, because I would do this with a lot of pop stars and say why I was listening to them was because of sexual attraction. I said this to a woman once, and when I was talking about the joke with Wally, she was like, “It’s funny because in that moment as a woman, I love that you’re into Lorde!”
That’s so amazing that you’re so sensitive.
Exactly. You love an artist that’s incredible. It was inspired by these things I would say as I was testing the waters, and then I would immediately realize I’d gone too far. I would immediately go back to this caricature of a straight guy. The only thing I knew would be like, “Okay, sexualize them. Say they’re hot. That’ll get everybody off your tail.” Sometimes, the women on the other side would be like, “Okay… cool.” I rightfully call her the songwriter of our generation, so that is something I would have said. And then the second they say that, I’m like… “I’m obsessed with her beauty, yeah? She is sexy!”
And it couldn’t have been a better moment, the serendipity that she also just announced a new album. Let’s talk about brand synergy.
There is an ecosystem happening, which I love. “Ribs” plays in the show. And “party 4 u.” Everyone’s catching up to the people that queer people have loved forever.
As they say, “First come the gays, then the girls.”
Of course, Samantha Jones PR!
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