Benito Skinner, Adam Dimarco hopes for season 2

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers about ‘overcompensation’, which now streams on Amazon Prime video.

When he made his first series ‘Overcompensation’, Benito Skinner wanted to grow up the spirit of all his favorite films and TV programs: ‘Freaks and Geeks’, ‘American Pie’, ‘Clueless’, ‘Mean Girls’ and even ‘The Real World’.

“All these things helped me to create this nostalgic world of Americana College Hell,” says Skinner Variety Of the Series Eight episodes, which Benny (Skinner) follows, a former Jock in high school who starts exploring out of the closet when he goes to university. As is apparent from the name of the main character, “overcompensing” is somewhat autobiographical.

“The inspiration was definitely my life,” says Skinner, and noticed that the series started as a live show in 2019. “These are stories about the fact that I am in and out of the closet and my experience so much to be loved and accepted.”

Closes to Skinner in the series is Wally Baram, who plays his close Confidant Carmen; Mary Beth Barone as Grace, his emo-turned Prepy sister; And Adam Dimarco as Peter, Grace’s Frat Bro Boyfriend. Despite the heavy subjects that ‘overcompensate’ deals ‘overcompensate’, the show is full of laughter, sex, parties and love trime – and ends in a total cliffhanger.

Below, Skinner, Baram, Barone and Dimarco talk more about working on the show, their favorite memories and hope for season 2.

How did you get involved in “overcompensation”?

Baram: I started as a writer in the show. I heard it had these themes that look so much like the things I am talking about in my stand-up and my writing. There was a character that looked like this like me – this girl with curly, bustling hair from New Jersey that just tried so hard and just wants to get so bad and not knows how to do that, so she keeps a romantic reach with sex. And [Benito and I] Meeted, and I felt that I could give you a lot of stories about the ways I had related to the character.

Barone: Benny and I met when he did his live show, and he had opened me to him a few times. I was completely blown away by how dynamic it was. Then he told me that he was writing a pilot about being closed at the university and Grace was always a character in it. And he said very early, I really want you to play my sister. I thought it would just be possible at some point, as Amazon would like a name or they should cast someone else, and he really fought for me to be in the show. I was also in the writer’s room, so I just grew from Grace and really all the characters and how complex they are.

Dimarco: I just got an audition. I found out later [Benito] thought of me specifically for the role. But I loved the script, I thought it was super funny. At first I didn’t know if I could play a character like Peter, just because I had never done that before, but I really wanted it. But I just had to fight a bit through self -doubt. I think I cried at some point, like at Facetime with my friend who ran those lines and I had something like: “I don’t know if I can do this.” I did a scene with Benny where we are exercising in the gym and then I hit Big Sean and Drake’s “All Me” to him for maybe a minute and a half to two minutes at the end of the audition. And he just had to sit a bit and float his head with it. And that was very nice, just try to find out different ways to make him feel uncomfortable. I was shrinking during the audition, as soon as they said “cut”, I would shrink and just be like that: “I’m so sorry.”

What was it like to work together on the set? Did you keep the script or was there improvisation?

Skinner: I think I had been to the script for so long, I just said to myself: “Once you are on the set, let yourself be surprised and I will continue.” I helped to choose this cast of people I respect and trust too much and I wanted to see them take and run the characters. It’s like, ok, this is a kind of my head, but let’s do it now and see how it feels.

Baram: Your first time you make a show, you are so precious to try to find out what the show is and you can’t do a slight mistake or stray from your vision. So I was really impressed by how [Benito] everyone on the set would trust to bring their own creative vision and their small part of the show and I really appreciated [he] Let me bring some Wallyism.

Barone: Benny created such a great and supporting environment where, if we got a few bad luck as written, we could always improvise and that could just feel very comfortable in the costumes and situations and characters. Because we play brothers and sisters, I only think so because we have so much history in our friendship and we spend so much time together, we can hold on to every dynamic. We will sometimes behave like brothers and sisters, we will sometimes behave like a gay man and a bi girl and then we will just randomly go sexually. And it’s just part of the dynamics.

Is there a particularly funny scene or reminder from set that stands out?

Skinner: [The bathroom scene during the Charli XCX concert in Episode 4] Is the hardest that I have ever laughed in my life. Shayne Fox, our brilliant production designer, built a fake bathroom in the bottom of the auditorium where we photographed the concert. And she made it disgusting, like a university. Wally was in the one next to me and I would hear Scott King, our Showrunner, watch the monitors, and it was the loudest caked I have ever heard of him.

Baram: That cackling is one of my greatest performances. It’s in my heart, it’s in my head.

Barone: We not only film on a university campus and in real Frat houses, but almost all of us lived in the same building, so it felt like we were in the dorms together. We feestten eigenlijk niet zo veel tijdens de shoot omdat we al het nepfeestjes moesten doen, maar ik was de zelf gekozen sociale stoel, dus ik begon aan de groep chats, ik begon aan de gedeelde fotoalbums, ik hield een college rager in mijn kleine appartement in mijn kleine appartement en we hadden allemaal gewoon verspild en speelden ze echt in een scène, als je een scène speelde in een scène of vulling in een scène in een scène, in het bijzonder In a scene in a scene, if you had a scene in a scene. It is just so important to build that dynamic.

Dimarco: When I started photographing that training scene from the audition, I had something like that, ok great, so I’m just going to rap the big sean “all me” verses of my audition. And then Benny and Scott were like: “We may not have the budget for that number, so you can just freestyle?” I had something like: “No, I don’t think I can do it, but I think I will try to write something soon.” And then we also got a version of me that “the motto” ramps from Drake. So we had three versions. And when my shitty rap that I wrote, maybe five minutes before the scene started, panic. I am so much, I am not in a bus now, I am just in a makeup tent struggling to even write words that rhyme. But that is of course the version that the show has achieved.

The final is certainly a cliffhanger. What do you hope for your characters if you get a season 2?

Skinner: I really hope we do that. I’m ready to go. I think I know what I want to do and there is so much more that we want to say. There will be shifting, and that is what that final is. This journey to become yourself and become overcompensing, it is a roller coaster and sometimes I think the university can be so selfish and you can be like, it is every man for himself. They are drugs and alcohol and feelings and we didn’t want to wander from it, and we want to continue it.

Barone: Benny has given me a bit of a taste of what he sees for the characters if we are lucky to get a season 2, but I think Grace is only investigating more of that leading role in her life and does not try to meet what other people expect from her. I really hope that Benny and Grace are finally able to be honest with who they are and how they make each other feel and how their parents make them feel over each other. I think we can have a very beautiful friendship there that could bloom in adulthood. But it is important for Grace to understand why Benny leans so much to be the golden boy and why he feels that the validation of his parents is such a driving force, and it is because he hides such a large part of his identity. So I think that by stripping that back, they can really grow in the neighborhood, because if someone doesn’t feel that he can reveal that to you, you don’t really know them at all. So that, I think, will be a breakthrough moment for their relationship.

Dimarco: I know what Benny has planned for season 2 if we get one, and it’s insane, it’s so good. I wish I could tell you. I don’t really know what to say, except that it is just more loose and more insane than this season.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.