‘Overcompensating’ Creator Benito Skinner Talks Self-exploration And The College Experience

The world of fake IDs and flavored vodka is a closeted college student’s playground in the comedy series “Overcompensating.”

Creator, writer and executive producer Benito Skinner stars as Benny, a football-playing first-year masking his gay identity with rehearsed frat boy diction and feigned adoration for masculine media like “The Godfather.”

In a roundtable interview, Skinner (“Queer as Folk,” “Idiotka”) told The Phoenix the series’ title was a reference point for each chaotic predicament and exaggerated personality in the show.

“Every single character and thing on screen is overcompensating to a degree, which can get overwhelming,” Skinner said. 

Amid the backdrop of the fictional Yates University, clouds of Axe body spray and publicly hypersexual couples saturate the college setting with gaudy humor. 

Skinner said he embedded visual comedy into the script due to a sketch-writing reflex, not thinking production would actually follow through. When he asked why a dog was sitting on a classroom set, he was told, “You wrote it in the fucking script.”

“We had so much fun, I think, in a background joke that can almost feel forward at a certain point,” Skinner said. “Everything feels performative in a way.” 

After gaining an audience of millions on TikTok and Instagram with his online persona Benny Drama, Skinner said he departed from the comfort of sketch comedy to develop this semi-autobiographical series. When he felt the same fear developing the show that he felt posting his first videos, Skinner said he knew he was doing the right thing. 

“This feels like a true creative challenge and something, I think, where it can get really emotional and I can tap into something in a story I really want to tell,” Skinner said.

Abandoning the exaggerated satirical impressions he built his platform on, Skinner molded Benny after himself and left the wild wigs and melodramatics to an ensemble of flamboyant characters. 

The cast is littered with comedians such as Wally Baram and Mary Beth Barone, who Skinner said sharpened the show’s voice.

“It’s so inspiring as a writer to have the actor in and you’re just like, ‘Oh, I know their wheelhouse but I also know what will be shocking for them,’” Skinner said. “They can stand on screen alone and tell a whole story and that was so inspiring to me.”

While each character offers unique comedic possibilities, they reveal their true emotions by overcompensating for their insecurities. For example, brash party girl Hailee’s insistence on taking and posting photos reveals a desire to be properly seen and heard, Skinner said. 

“I never shied away from when it felt like it needed to go emotional, go there,” Skinner said. “Trying to find yourself is both really funny in retrospect and really sad at times.”

Being able to explain why characters portrayed themselves in such over-the-top ways allowed Skinner to more honestly depict the college self-discovery experience, he said. 

During the majority of his time attending Georgetown University from 2012 to 2016, Skinner was closeted, according to Out. He said finding the humor in the sadness of this reality — and vice-versa — was central to his writing. 

“I tried to tell it as true to my experience as possible,” Skinner said. “I wanted it to be definitely from my perspective and the things that I had seen just to make it as true and feel honest to that time.”

While he graduated nearly a decade ago, Skinner said he hopes people of all ages can identify with aspects of his journey. Putting aside specifics of the story — like “George of the Jungle” being Benny’s sexual awakening — Skinner said he wants queer viewers to see themselves reflected in the character’s actions and experiences.

Universal elements of the coming of age story — big life changes, suppressed emotions, the search for true friends — form the surreal world of Yates. With budding sexual lives and newfound independence, Benny and his peers embark on a journey of self-discovery set in the distinctly hectic first weeks of college. 

“I do think, in general, there is a college bubble that does exist of style and what campuses feel like,” Skinner said. “These things do kind of feel forever in a way.”

All episodes of “Overcompensating” are available to stream on Prime Video.