Everyone is compensating for something—or at least, that’s what drives the story in social media star Benito Skinner’s new Amazon Prime comedy, ‘Overcompensating.’
Following Benny (Skinner) through his first year of college, the teenager (in the story) uses a masculine mask—in the form of football skills, valedictorian vibes and promiscuous flirting—to conceal his closeted true self. It’s also that notion that drove showrunner and executive producer Scott King to the project—even though he went to college years before Skinner was even born.
“Well, I had gotten the script—Benny had written a script—and then I was told that he’s really big on the internet. I’m not on social media and it’s set in college, and I went to college a billion years ago. I literally graduated before he was born. So I thought ahh…but then as soon as we met, truly it was just right away, you just meet someone and we had such a similar sense of humor,” King explains.
“The more we spoke about just overcompensating, it was different, but the same from when I went [to college.] I really felt with his experience and mine, there was such commonality. So I felt oh, I know what I could do and I know how I could help. And it was really about how can I help get Benny’s vision to the screen? What I look for is just really funny, really great people that have a story to tell. And he had such an important story to tell.”
Benny is not the only student or adult for that matter in the show that is putting on a bit of an act. Every character seems to be trying to prove something to someone or society in general, from Benny’s classmates, to friends, to family. And the show frames it all with comedy first and foremost, and getting the tone right was the focal point of it all.
“[Tone-wise], it’s one of those things where a lot of times, it’s all best intentions and you think it’s cohesive, and then you get into editing. But this was just an experience where Benny was so clear on what the tone was. And all the cast that we ended up casting, no one had judgments about their characters and they all knew the ways they were overcompensating,” King continues.
“We also had this first table read, and this was where it was really clear that we had to read all eight episodes in one sitting. Never a thing you want to do with a comedy, but we did and we flew in all the cast—It was like 14 people at that table read. You just felt there was this real common tone… It was just one of those things where magic happens and sometimes it doesn’t. This was the case where it just really did. And also Benny, again, he knew what he wanted and that was what we were always going for.”
The show is passion project for Skinner, who likely took from his time at Georgetown University, where he didn’t come out as gay until his senior year. ‘Overcompensating’ also stars Wally Baram (Carmen), Adam DiMarco (Peter), Mary Beth Barone (Grace), Rish Shah (Miles), Owen Thiele (George), Corteon Moore (Gabe) and Connie Britton (Kathryn). Each and every character is on their own journey, but all of them are peppered with hookups, flavored vodka, and fake IDs.
“I really love getting the opportunity to see what happens with Grace, where you see her in the beginning and you think this is a character a certain way, and then no. And then also her boyfriend, Peter, who’s such a villain, it would seem. But then as you learn more about him, oh, there’s some real pain there,” finishes Scott. “And then when we were going through, we just started talking about let’s have the campus overcompensate as well. So we talked about it…and well, we didn’t really want to do a frat. And then Benny was like, what’s a frat that overcompensates? We need to do a secret society. So then we did all of this research into that. And now, we’re just really excited to show everyone what we’ve done.”
All 8 episodes of “Overcompensating” are available now on Prime Video.
