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A longstanding darling of the online cosmos thanks to his scandalous wit and A-list parodies (Kourtney Kardashian, Shawn Mendes, Timothée Chalamet) – the actor and comedian is now transferring his qualifications to the small screen, with college-set, coming-out sitcom Overcompensating. He reflects on breaking into Hollywood, the potential for Spongebob to be a queer icon, recruiting Charli xcx for the show and feeling unlovable as a gay man.
Benito wears full look ARMANI, watch OMEGA
Words ANDREW WRIGHT
How is Benito Skinner feeling on the morning of his Man About Town interview? “Well…” he begins. “Do I feel constantly like my lower back is tingling and I'm gonna shit my pants and a little bit like I’m just on the cusp of having a full-body panic attack? Yes,” he declares. “But other than that, I feel incredible.”
The 31-year-old is arriving at quite the career turning point in the weeks that follow, so it’s unsurprising he’s feeling it physiologically. In essence, he’s graduating – from social media star to international TV helmsman. He earned heavyweight internet stripes during COVID, as Benny Drama, through outlandish but razor-sharp skits and celebrity impressions, but in A24 college comedy Overcompensating he’s drawing on source material from much closer to home. Created, written by and starring Skinner, the show follows Benny, a closeted freshman jock – somewhat based on himself – and the excessive measures he takes to mask his disorientation on the circuitous path to coming-of-age and coming-out.
The project bears origins in his stage show of the same name, debuted in 2018 and toured in the US the following year. However, the series marks Skinner’s crowning opus to date, consolidating his place among a growing legion of TV and film visionaries who nurtured early audiences on the internet – see Issa Rae (Insecure), Quinta Brunson (Abbott Elementary) and Jordan Firstman (Rotting in the Sun), to name but a few. He signed off on the final product two days prior. “Now I'm like, ‘Let’s get this baby out.’” For now, however, it’s an LA March morning and he’s in a mundane holding pen of sorts awaiting the project’s release – aka his kitchen, from which he connects, sporting a cobalt blue hoodie and tousled brown locks.
“I had such a bizarre, complicated, kind of devastating and funny experience in college,” he tells me, as we settle in, of his time at Washington, DC’s Georgetown University, where he studied English, film, media studies and drama. Campus life is notoriously a carnival of emotions, so it’s perhaps apt that his final countdown to Overcompensating’s release comes with a portion of sensory overload. From the indispensable friendships forged to flavoured-vodka-laced fraternity nights and hit-and-miss hookups, the show presents the whole tableau of student life in all its gauche glory. However, the figure depicted at its heart isn’t quite a carbon copy of Skinner’s younger self. “I based all of these characters on feelings and relationships and experiences,” he explains. “But I found early on that I wanted to make a separation. I didn't want to get too in my head about it. I wanted Benny to feel like a real character and a different person.” Fictional Benny keeps his dormitory room spick and span, for instance, whereas “I am the messiest bitch you've ever met in your life.”
Benito wears full look THOM BROWNE
Skinner, unofficially, has four seasons in mind, so depending how faithful to the facts the subsequent chapters might be, a stint shooting across the pond could also be on the cards. “I studied abroad in London,” he tells me when I bemoan the four meteorological seasons we’ve experienced in as many hours in the British capital. “I brought like one light jacket. The journey through weather was something really special there.”
Perhaps it could rival the sinuous odyssey that coming out can prove to be. “Kudos to those who have [represented it onscreen] in 90 minutes,” he says. “But mine was complicated. You have to go on the coming-out tour. I should have had shirts made.” The rigmarole often sprawls across adulthood in some form — all it takes is a “Have you got a girlfriend, mate?” while contained in a barber’s chair and you’re back to the starting line. “I’m still coming out. And I'm publicly gay on the internet,” Skinner protests. “Like, I shouldn't have to do this anymore.”
For many a fledgling queer person, the process finds its genesis in one fateful, unforeseen gay awakening. Skinner’s was laying eyes on a gorilla-raised bumbling Brendan Fraser as the titular lead of 1997 Disney gallivant George of The Jungle. “I was definitely like, ‘Huh? I'm way more invested in this film than I think anyone expected me to be.’” In an Idaho childhood which found its mid-point at the millennium, queer representation wasn’t exactly dropping from the pine trees around him. But what he did have was SpongeBob SquarePants. ‘I always felt like he was having a lot of fun with gender,” he chortles. “That little fucker. I remember being in second grade, and that really clicked for me. Now watch fucking Republicans [read] this and be like, ‘Cancel, Spongebob.’ I dare ya.”
Skinner also had “an amazing, very liberal family”, so his positive early reference points for queerness were often observed micro-moments of acceptance. Like simply seeing his family enjoying 1997 rom-com classic My Best Friend’s Wedding, complete with Rupert Everett as the multi-dimensional, openly gay George Downes. “You're like, ‘Oh, this is acceptable, and this is a huge Hollywood movie with Julia Roberts.’ I think that did impact me. You don’t think it does at the time, but in that moment that felt okay and my family was around me watching and loving [the film].” He’d like Overcompensating to be a similar beacon for a modern landscape. “I hope people watching feel like: “‘Oh, God, I felt that too,’ or ‘I’ve done that,’” he says.
When, by his final year of university, Skinner felt ready to come out, friends were his first port of call. The backdrops were diverse – he told one that he was gay in a branch of Domino’s Pizza. “Can you imagine? To tell someone over a Cinnastix that you're a homo is really beautiful. That'll stick with me forever.” Friendship is the lifeblood of Overcompensating and you get a sense, also, of Skinner’s reality. There’s an instant familiarity upon meeting him, so it’s easy to imagine people becoming locked in his orbit. He carries a gentle warmth not far from that which a benevolent English teacher beholds to their queer students, only you want to snack on gossip with him rather than gothic literature, and he serves a Thom Browne three-piece and a chiselled jawline at a professional event rather than a tweed jacket and crafty broach. “This is a safe space, I need you to know that,” he says with a jovial dialled-up sincerity when I apologise for my subpar Wi-Fi connection postponing our call time by a few minutes. He’s a friend of mine and a friend of yours.
But he also has very real, layered friendships that have been lodestars in his life – not least, with women. “They’re protectors and heroes and idols,” he enthuses, and Overcompensating pays tribute to the “bond and sense of safety” gay men so often seek in the opposite gender. “The first people that a lot of queer people come out to is their best friend,” he says. “And that best friend for a lot of gay men tends to be a woman who is sitting next to them, holding their hand through it all. I feel like gay men are also able to give empowerment to those women and be that person who's also looking out for them.” It’s an alliance with a chequered history in film and TV representation, thanks to the gay best-friend trope that until recent years regularly beset popular culture. But, nowadays, “We can both be sidekicks,” Skinner highlights. He’s enjoyed comedic takes on the dynamic, like the slapstick-laden Will & Grace, “But I think there are also other stories to tell. The women I was best friends with in school and college saved my life, 100%. So it goes deeper.”
Days shooting Overcompensating in Toronto, especially ones in which vignettes from Skinner’s university years were translated into fiction, were often rounded off with texts to those who comprised the real-life cast a decade ago. “I would be like, ‘Damn, we really did that. That was a good moment. And now I just reshot it. So it lives forever in a weird way.” Like many an alumnus, ample frivolity also figures in any look-back, in and around the identity formation – messier times and all that. “At college, I would be like, ‘Oh my God, I'm gonna have eight shots of Burnett's vodka tonight,’” he laughs. “I definitely went really hard [at college to the extent] that I can barely drink now.” Such indulgence offset his straight-edged school years. “In high school, I was like valedictorian. I had to be perfect.” It was archetypal overcompensating. “Very The Velvet Rage-coded,” he says, referencing Alan Downs’ 2005 book dissecting the polished persona gay men can emit in order to camouflage the shame they harbour. The turmoil can manifest in academic and, later, professional perfectionism. “I very much am like, ‘If I don't do good on this, you won't love me.’ I still get all my homework done on time.” In Skinner’s case, it also amplified a fear of succumbing to youthful misdemeanours back in the day. “I think, [in high school], I puffed one joint once and apologised profusely to my family,” he laughs.
While he eventually eased into nightlife and its excesses, these days, he doesn’t long for a return to evenings where vodka-shot consumption skimmed double figures. “If I had eight shots now, you wouldn't see me ever again, sweetie. I’d be gone.” The unlined, porcelain skin of one’s late teens is something Skinner would welcome back, however. “We were so cute. What the hell.” Given the fact he’s now playing a version of his 19-year-old self on screen, it would appear he’s still very much in his prime, though. “I am 19 now, just for the record,” he laughs. “I play 19 on TV, so that is my current age, which I think is really powerful.” Plus, the cast of his childhood favourites – the likes of Grease, The OC and Glee – were bordering their Saturn returns when they were populating fictional school corridors, so he cites them as laying the foundations. “We’re entering that chat, as they say, in a huge way.”
Benito wears vest HERMES
The “we” in question, Overcompensating’s cohort, is a potpourri of some of acting’s most promising names – including The White Lotus’ Adam Di Marco, Obsession’s Rish Shah, nascent comedy writer-turned-actor Wally Baram and Skinner’s best-friend and podcast co-host, actor and comedian Mary Beth Barone. There’s also the cachet of industry old-hands Connie Britton (Nashville, Friday Night Lights) and Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet), playing Skinner’s fictional parents. Oh, and Charli xcx — more on that later. The show’s production companies A24, Strongbaby and Amazon MGM Studios agreed, "The cast meant everything,” he says. “And I grew up with these really electric casts.” Like The OC – “Such a delicious cast.”
“I wanted each person to come in and show the humanity in something that could have been bigger, obvious and very college. And that's what everybody in this cast does. They were all absolutely my first pick for their character.” DiMarco was the first to be cast as Benny’s older sister Grace’s BNOC boyfriend, Peter. “I just felt like he added such a human element to this East Coast himbo if I will [put] it so eloquently.” After a chemistry read with Shah, who plays Miles, the subject of fictional Benny’s affections, the casting team’s yeses were almost instant — “We got out of the Zoom, and it was silent for a minute. And then [a producer] from A24 was like, ‘Well it's him, right?’” Then there was Skinner’s suggestion to recruit Barone as Grace – less driven by cronyism and more just watching Gary Marshall and Adam Sandler movies growing up: “seeing someone make something with all of the people they love and their best friends.” Also, beyond their friendship, “Mary Beth is someone who I just idolise and love the work of,” he tells me. She had to undertake the same audition process as everyone else, including a chemistry read, despite the fact they’ve been hosting their weekly zeitgeist-digesting podcast Ride since 2021. “We have probably 500 hours of footage of us together laughing.”
Other friendships unravelled perpendicular to the project, namely that of Skinner’s and xcx. The internet might have you believe that Skinner’s boyfriend, director and photographer Terrence O’Connor, was the nexus between them. He directed xcx’s 2021 music video “New Shapes” and is now her self-described marketing director, intertwined in the visual identity of her 2024 summer-defining sixth album Brat. However, it was actually Skinner who approached xcx first, when he and O’Connor stumbled upon her at a friend’s birthday party, just after they’d moved to LA in early 2020. “This is powerful because we can really set the record straight here,” he smiles. Overcompensating was in its embryonic stages, but Skinner already had xcx in mind as his dream candidate to score it. With the liquid courage of two margaritas – “As I said, I am a lightweight now” – he decided to try his luck. “I went over to her, and I was like, ‘I have this pilot, and I really want you to do the music on it.’ I felt like, if we were doing this nostalgic college show, she has been so impactful in pop music for the last 10 years. She not only feels current, but nostalgic to me.“ He asked if he could send her a script, and her response was, “‘Yeah, sure babes,’” he says, imitating her nonchalant Essex drawl.
Overcompensating has been, after all, an endeavour of friendship, so xcx recruited a coterie of contemporaries to co-create alongside her. From her boyfriend, The 1975 drummer George Daniel to film composer Alex Somers (Nickel Boys) and indie-pop mainstay Amber Bain (otherwise known as The Japanese House) – “Charli kind of assembled my favourite musicians of all time,” Skinner says. While she has been a linchpin of modern pop and, in particular, an icon among LGBTQIA+ circles for over a decade, as Overcompensating filmed last summer, Brat would see xcx become the subject of a global frenzy. However, she still found time to make an onscreen cameo too, filming on a day off during a Canadian pitstop on her and Troye Sivan’s co-headlined Sweat tour. “It's unbelievable how much she can do in a day,” Skinner reflects. “If you see her Letterboxd profile, she's watching a film every night. I'm like, ‘What the fuck baby, go to bed.’”
Benito wears jumper MASU, shirt and tie BOSS, shorts LOEWE
Skinner believes that you shouldn’t meet your heroes “unless it’s Charli xcx or Lady Gaga.” The latter recently recruited him to mediate a Spotify press conference-style fan event in anticipation of her seventh studio album MAYHEM. “I’m a Little Monster first, human being second,” he wrote in an Instagram post in its wake. “I have never had nerves like that in my life,” he says, one week on. “It was just full drip-sweat down my back. But she was the most lovely, brilliant, kind… I can’t say enough nice things about her. My paws were permanently up and they’re going to be up for the rest of my life.”
It’s fitting that Skinner should meet Gaga, arguably pop’s firebrand LGBTQIA+ advocate of her era, just as he’s about to make as decisive a contribution to the queer TV canon as Overcompensating. Perhaps an investiture of sorts took place post-press conference, where Gaga officiated his credentials to galvanise young queer minds in the way she long has. He could have also sought guidance on the vast stages he’s now become a regular on as life continues to rev up. The Vanity Fair Oscar Party and SAG Award red carpets were among those to be graced with his presence earlier this year. “I still walk into those things and I’m like, ‘What the fuck, I’m just a f****t from Idaho,’” he laughs, regarding the interminable tussle that imposter syndrome presents. “But I feel cute and I’m liking my outfits.” He decompresses, after such an evening, by eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes in front of The OC. On Oscar night, Barone was staying at his house, so he brought home the scandal of the night as a side, too. “I just told her everyone who had been weird at it, and that was amazing.”
He might have made a name for himself observing the oddities of The Hollywood Set, but Skinner is quickly finding his well-earned position at its nucleus himself. It didn’t happen by accident – “I’ve wanted to be an actor and a writer my whole life,” he reflects. The myriad textures of Overcompensating are proof of his aptitude. He has high hopes for the show’s potential to affect. “It’s for everybody feeling like they’re just inherently unlovable and they have to do so much to make up for it. But we go about it the wrong way because I don't think we are inherently unlovable,” he concludes. “That’s the whole point.”
Overcompensating is out 15th May on Prime Video
Photography by Richie Lee Davis
Styling by Douglas VanLaningham
Words by Andrew Wright
Editor Andrew Wright
Art Director Michael Morton
Fashion Director Luke Day
Production Director Lola Randall
Junior Art Director Natasha Lesiakowska
Hair by Nathaniel Dezan at OPUS Beautyusing Balmain Hair
Skin by Loftjet at Forward Artists
Special Thanks to The Venice Beach House
