Overcompensating is a new television series on Prime Video where a closeted college student explores his identity and navigates relationships.
Leading the cast are two openly queer performers coming from comedic backgrounds. Benito Skinner plays Benny, a former football star facing his freshman year in college.
Born in Boise, Idaho, he attended Bishop Kelly High School, where he was a wide receiver in real life in the football team. He later attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He became a social media star and performed his show Overcompensating in New York. This led to starring, writing and executive producing the eight-episode series released through Prime Video.
Wally Baram brings Carmen to life as Benny’s best friend at the school. In real life, Baram brings stand-up comedy experience to the table and has written for hit shows, such as Shrinking and What We Do in the Shadows.
The talented duo traveled to Chicago for a screening of several episodes of Overcompensating and met up to chat about it with Windy City Times.
Windy City Times: Did you know each other before making this project together?
Benito Skinner: No, not until the Zoom meeting. Wally’s stand-up was sent to me and a script she had written in the writer’s room for A24. I read the script, and I was obsessed with it on page one. I thought she was brilliant!
I keep saying that I’m a witch because I immediately wanted her to play Carmen. We met on Zoom and I felt so comfortable with her from the beginning. It felt like what I think Benny feels like when he meets Carmen in the series. I just wanted to tell Wally everything about me and I still feel that way today. I was just in the car with her and wanted to tell her everything about my day! [laughs]
I’m so in awe of female comics all the time. They are my heroes, my gods and whom I pray to. The second I saw Wally, I felt like it had to be her and I’m so glad it was.
Wally Baram: I’m the luckiest girl in the world to be working across from someone who is my boss and also my friend. To have someone say all those things about me in every respect means the world.
WCT: Is this your first acting gig, Wally?
WB: Yes. I was in the writer’s room writing from my own experiences, but at no point had I ever thought that this role would go to me. From my experiences in writer’s rooms previously and knowing the casting process, casting directors don’t usually hire someone who has never acted before to be in the lead role of a show, especially after the strike, where everything seemed so precious.
A24 had me send in a self-tape and then had me come back in for a chemistry read. When everyone wanted me for the part, I didn’t think it was true or real. From there, it was surreal and even my lawyer, who had only negotiated my writing deals, had me break it down and explain it to him.
BS: I had never acted in this way either. I had done a few things, but had not led a show before.
I grew up with television series where I felt these shows discovered stars like The O.C., Gossip Girl and Skins. These shows were references for Overcompensating and there’s something beautiful about bringing new faces to audiences.
It didn’t feel like a risk to any of us. I started my career performing sketch comedy and stand-up. If a person can do stand-up, I think they can do anything.
WCT: Improvisation and thinking on your feet would be valuable in almost any situation.
BS: Yes, I remember talking to Wally for the first time on that Zoom and saw the character of Carmen right there. I saw a person who just desperately wanted to be loved and not be judged for her choices. That was something that we wanted for all the cast and it didn’t matter how experienced they were.
I’ve been waiting for someone to take a chance on me like Amazon and A24 did, so I’m happy to take chances on people who I think are geniuses.
This cast is like lightning in a bottle and it’s crazy how unbelievable this cast is. I got every pick I wanted in the end!
WCT: You used your witch powers to land Charli XCX before her music career grew even bigger…
BS: Yes!
WCT: Was the after-party fun with this amazing cast?
BS: Yes, the wrap party was fun. I will say I was nervous before I met Kyle MacLachlan and Connie Britton. They are my heroes because I respect their work so much. You really couldn’t find two more down-to-earth, brilliant and kind people in the world. My time on set with them was some of the greatest experiences of my life, truly.
During the parents’ scene, they were hanging out in the holding tent when I thought they would be in their trailers.
WB: Kyle was eating his Quaker Oats Chewy Granola Bar with the rest of us and talked about yoga!
BS: There’s one scene where I have a special scene with Connie in my bedroom and she was playing it as a version of my parents. It felt so strange, and that’s when I knew I was a witch! [laughs]
WCT: What scenes were true to your real-life college experience?
BS: It may seem like a lie, but the golf cart scene in the pilot happened to me and my best friend the first night we met. She transferred to the school in my sophomore year and we are still best friends to this day. Her name is Nora and she inspired the character of Carmen. We were out one night and we were trying to go to a CVS to buy drink chasers. There was a golf cart sitting there and she was like, “We’re stealing it.”
I was scared in the moment and I really am a little bit of the Benny in the show, where I feel I have to be a perfect boy or no one will love me. We drove the golf cart to CVS in D.C., so that was a true college experience and I didn’t get in trouble.
WCT: What would a series like this have meant to you while you were in college?
WB: When I was in high school and college, I was looking for shows like this. There were only a few shows that scratched that itch. Skins was one of the few shows that I rewatched. I loved Freaks and Geeks and the movies Superbad and Ladybird, with that coming-of-age era.
The sexual elements felt purely sexual. With Overcompensating, we are sexy, but they are using their body as a tool because of a vulnerability that they have. Anything salacious comes together around a heartfelt and thoughtful core.
BS: That’s such a beautiful way of saying it. When this project started, it was a coming-out story that I wanted to extend to other people. For me, it was knowing my past and feeling uncomfortable around the push and pull of coming out. That’s something I haven’t seen fully fleshed out in other series and I feel lucky that we get to do that with this show.
I didn’t just come out of the closet one day and it was all perfect. I find at times that I’m still coming out. I’m still trying to get rid of this internalized hatred and homophobia that I have in my brain because it was indoctrinated in me for so long.
That hatred is something that everyone in the show has been indoctrinated with and it’s a part of all of them, a hatred of self, an obsession with masculinity, the power it can bring, and the comfort one thinks it can bring. This show is able to explore that while also having dick jokes and allows us to be playful.
Writing it was fun because I could write that scene with Benny and Carmen in their dorm room, having a sweet exchange together, then in the next moment, my roommate is naked with his penis out!
I feel really lucky to make a show about a gay man and I love being gay. Hopefully, that comes through on the show and I don’t feel like that has always been the case for some of these stories. Sometimes in the past, show runners didn’t have enough time to give nuances on how complicated being gay can be. It has been shown as doing something wrong and Overcompensating is not like that with these characters at all.
WCT: The question is posed in the pilot episode, “What do you want to be?” How would you answer that?
WB: It’s interesting that you ask that because I feel like that question in the pilot for me represents the farce that someone needs to know that answer, particularly in college.
Do we ever really know the answer to that question? I find that often now, who I think I want to be may not be true to who I am. I want to be someone who is comfortable with what I’m feeling and how I’m developing.
BS: I cannot believe I’m doing what I’m doing right now. This is so beyond anything I ever thought that I would do or be able to do. I am constantly in a state of shock and this is all I’ve ever wanted. I am just a gay dude who grew up in Idaho and this was not originally on the menu for me. I would love to continue making this show and I have so many more stories to tell within it. I am so proud of it.
This experience has just been the greatest joy of my life and I told my boyfriend last night that if this is the only thing I ever make, I would be fine with it.
WCT: What direction would you like to see the characters go in season two of Overcompensating?
BS: We will see how this one does and nothing is promised. My goal is not to rewrite the whole thing in season two and still keep the essence of the show. There is something that happens after winter break and students come back for the next semester, so that could be explored.
Whatever rugs or comfort blankets we’ve given to all the characters, I want to take them away and see what they look like after that. Every semester can be a fresh start of sorts, where new characters are introduced and there are more stories to tell.
We didn’t get to Carmen’s family yet and I am dying to cover spring break. There wasn’t enough time with 30 minutes and eight episodes. I would want to take the show abroad in season three, maybe to Italy. I just want to go to a villa!
Overcompensating teaches fresh lessons about LGBTQ+ culture while streaming on Prime Video beginning May 15.