Benito Skinner is able to have fun the tip of a milestone summer time after making the leap from digital sketch comedy to the small display screen as each the creator and star of “Overcompensating.”
Skinner ― recognized to his roughly 3 million TikTok and Instagram followers as Benny Drama ― used his post-adolescent years in Boise, Idaho, as inspiration for the coming-of-age collection, which premiered on Amazon Prime Video in Might. He performs Benny Scanlon, a former highschool athlete, valedictorian and homecoming king who’s struggling to come back to phrases together with his queer sexuality as he begins his first semester on the fictional Yates College.
Amid his efforts to take care of a heteronormative facade round his older sister, Grace (Mary Beth Barone), and her boyfriend, Peter (Adam DiMarco), Benny connects with fellow freshman Carmen (Wally Baram), who’s feeling equally exasperated by faculty life. Hookups and hijinks ensue as Benny fumbles his approach towards self-acceptance.
By all accounts, “Overcompensating” is a buzzy, breakout hit with each critics and viewers, boosted by an A-list roster of visitor stars ― which incorporates Connie Britton, Kyle Maclachlan, James Van Der Beek and Bowen Yang ― and a Charli XCX-curated soundtrack.
The success of “Overcompensating,” Skinner advised HuffPost, has “felt so surreal,” significantly given its prolonged gestation.
“I’ve been working on it for almost six years now, so to have people ― especially queer people ― come up to me and say they saw their experience reflected on screen in a way they maybe hadn’t seen before has felt like such an honor,” he mentioned. “I feel so incredibly lucky that people found the show and rallied behind it.”
Getting again into the headspace of his closeted self for his character on the present, nonetheless, was a little bit of a “cringe” expertise.
“I’m not going to say ‘traumatic,’ because it was obviously a safe environment,” he quipped. “But so many things you see on the show, I actually did.”
This week, Skinner was unveiled because the face of Heineken’s “0.0 Reasons, 0.0 Judgment” marketing campaign, spotlighting the corporate’s nonalcoholic beer model on the U.S. Open in New York. Like “Overcompensating,” he feels the marketing campaign highlights “the ways that we limit ourselves, feel such shame in just living our lives and trying to be truthful to what we want.”
By way of each his portrayal of a closeted jock on “Overcompensating” and his look on the U.S. Open, Skinner is seemingly making a secure house for members of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood within the sports activities world, the place overtly queer athletes and different figures stay scarce.
Craig Barritt through Getty Photos
“I just think queer people should be everywhere,” he mentioned. “We are everywhere [but] to feel like we can’t go into spaces … or thinking we’re not allowed to be in sports or we can’t care about sports, I don’t want to live in that world.”
Together with his Hollywood profile at a brand new excessive, Skinner is conscious he’ll additionally must work tougher than ever this fall to take care of his long-standing repute as a Halloween fanatic. He and his boyfriend, director and photographer Terrence O’Connor, are recognized for his or her jaw-dropping {couples}’ appears to be like, equivalent to Elvis and Priscilla Presley and their “Death Becomes Her” homage, each unveiled final 12 months.
Although Skinner is tight-lipped on specifics, he mentioned his costume this 12 months will embody a wink at “Overcompensating.” And whereas the collection itself has but to be formally renewed, Skinner has already begun interested by what lies forward for Benny and his buddies in a potential second season.
“I’m really interested in the experience of starting to come out to your family and, I think, the beginnings of trying to reintroduce yourself to yourself,” he mentioned. “That’s something that took me a really long time, and I’m still on that journey right now. There’s so much I want to say about finding out what you’ve missed out on and the people who have come before you.”
