We so often think of “performing” through life as a bad thing—the unexamined life’s answer to its own feelings of displacement and rejection, an anodyne to the discomfort of being with oneself.  At 18, most people are lucky if they have even an inkling of knowing who they are. But for Benito Skinner, performance was never just a mask—it was a language, a way of existing in a world that prefers derivation of the standard to invention of the individual.

Skinner—online persona Benny Drama—can’t stop performing. He’s a social media star, a practiced Kar-Jenner impersonator, a comedian, a podcast host, and, without question, the leading man in his own story. His rise to internet fame was built on razor-sharp celebrity impressions and a knack for crafting original, larger-than-life characters. Among his most beloved creations are Deliverance Richards, the ever-hustling real estate agent, and Jenni, the scissor-wielding hairstylist with terminal oversharing syndrome.

“With Jenni, I was like, I know this woman loves Funko Pops. I know she rocks the MAC counter. I know that everything is always a cut-crease,” Skinner explains of his character-building process, “and then you kind of start to build out more. But I think it really starts with the comedy and the beats of a scene.” For Skinner, character creation isn’t just about the aesthetic—it’s his rhythm and fine-tuned details that make his personas feel at once absurd and intimately familiar. Exaggerated as his characters may be, we all know her.

In our brief conversation, the devilishly handsome comedian and I bond over our mutual victimization by perioral dermatitis. (The subtle splotches around his mouth simply can’t overshadow his chiseled face.) We talk about bringing back “icing” in 2025. (To the uninitiated, this is the treasured college tradition of hiding a Smirnoff Ice Premium Malt Beverage for someone to find who then has to drop to their knees and chug it on the spot.) And we toast to our good fortune—to being beneficiaries of the indescribable, mountainous, inimitable love shared between a gay man and a woman.

To experience deep friendship, the kind that Skinner knows well, is to be a witness to another. “[The relationship between women and gay men] is such a celebration and it’s like protection from a world that is so scary and masculine and diabolical,” he acknowledges. “[Those friendships] are like safe spaces.” The choice not to abdicate that responsibility, but to be the stronghold in another’s life, is arguably one of the most profound gestures of love we can make. He adds, “maybe the saddest thing is when that kind of diabolical patriarchy claws its way into the relationship.” It’s often in those moments that we are most confronted with the perils of bifurcating one’s true nature.

Overcompensating, the forthcoming comedy written and created by Skinner (who also stars) and produced by A24 and Strong Baby, is, in many ways, about the acute terror of being truly known by another, and whether or not to accept the responsibility to know someone else.

Young and trembling, Benny, Skinner’s namesake character, arrives at Yates College—a desperate non-Ivy that takes itself far too seriously—and is immediately slotted into the former-homecoming-king turned-ultimate-college-party-boy archetype. “I feel like the one thing people haven’t seen from me yet,” he reflects, “is something more like this character, which feels more like me and my story, more stripped down. And there is comedy in that.” Skinner perfectly captures the feeling of heading off to college, of becoming nostalgic for the time you’re in. And music, he says, was a huge part of creating that feeling.

With its star-studded cast and team, which includes Charli XCX both as guest star and producer of the show’s original music, Overcompensating might not appear stripped down. But Skinner and his team know exactly when to be subtle; when to allow the viewer to melt into the story. Reflecting on some of the original music Charli produced for the show, Skinner says, “I could hear the suppression of the voices throughout, like Amber [Bain] and Charli’s voices are trying to get through. And that’s what it feels like to be, I think, in the closet or to feel like people don’t love you or they won’t love you if they know who you really are.”

At its core, Overcompensating is a nuanced and funny study of performance through gender, class, social strata, and sexuality. Skinner draws close the great wide cavern that lies between the constructed self and the true self, boldly exploring the confrontation that begins when the true self arrives at your door—knocking, knocking. The form that knock takes is different for everyone, I think. For Benny—the character, that is—the knock was an inescapable crush. It was vomiting up beta fish during a Charli XCX concert. It was the friendship of a woman who didn’t tolerate his bullshit.

“I hate to call ‘being in the closet’ a lie, because I don’t think that’s what it is. I think it’s something bigger than that,” Skinner shares. He’s right. Performance is bigger than a lie—it’s the peculiar art of wanting to be loved. And the recurrent a cappella numbers that appear like omens whenever Benny needs to resurrect his ailing performance as a straight guy? That’s not just good writing—it’s the exorcism of resonant tropes into new forms. Overcompensating exonerates performance from its mainstream exile. And it discovers beauty in the fumbles and missteps that litter the path towards finding the true self.

One of the most interesting relationships that Skinner explores in the show is that of Benny and his sister, Grace, played by Skinner’s real-life best friend Mary Beth Barone. Through their dynamic, Skinner pits the constructed self against its first witness, challenging the narrative that growth is at all linear. “I was just really inspired by this idea of someone who had gone to college and completely rewritten who they were for someone else,” Skinner explains. For him, this ties directly into the experience of coming out. “Coming out is really, really complicated,” he tells me. “I feel like any time I’ve seen it in media, it just feels so quick or everyone’s just like ‘thumbs up’ or there’s no backslide. It’s the most complicated thing I’ve ever done in my life and I still feel weird about it.”

Skinner is lucky enough to have been known deeply by the women in his life, and this project is, in many ways, a celebration of those relationships. The creator widely credits the women in his life that witnessed him. The first to do it, he says, was his godmother and the namesake of the character Carmen. “That was my first relationship with a woman who I’m like, she just sees me and loves exactly who I am. I don’t have to do anything for her.”

As a gay kid in Idaho, Skinner learned early on how to perform straightness—and to his horror, it wasn’t located in his pajama-clad renditions of “Oops!...I Did it Again” or passionately-delivered Lizzie McGuire monologues. On his adolescent quest of self abnegation, Skinner tells me, “I was like, ‘All right, we’re going to shelve that for a while’ and kind of just [became] a version of a masculine boy-next-door that I thought would make people love me, which really is like the ethos of the show.”

His art has been shaped by women in a number of ways. Skinner recognizes the iconic female SNL alums—Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and  Amy Poehler—as some of his earliest inspirations. In college, he discovered Inside Amy Schumer and Broad City, reveling in their brilliance. “Women are just so much funnier than men. I can’t even believe we let men do comedy,” he exalts. Coming from most men, a statement like this might sound like forced self-deprecation, but with Skinner, it’s different. His admiration for the women in his life and in the comedy world is both sincere and unwavering.

“In the age of the internet, I think it’s hard to not try so hard. It’s like, God, we just all want to be loved so desperately,” Skinner laughs. His voice, even in jest, conveys a longing that lingers long after the words are spoken. “I mean, I will always do too much.” His words hang in the air, a self-awareness that is both tender and unshakable. That tendency to overdo, however, extends beyond love and into the smallest corners of daily life for Skinner, for all of us. “It’s in the fabric of who I am. It’s literally like the skin that you see in front of you,” he says, gesturing towards the aesthetic struggle we share. 

“I’m like, what if I slathered 15 different things on [my face] to make [the dermatitis] go away?” he asks jokingly, referencing the most maddening factor in dealing with dermatitis—the restraint that healing requires.

On his writing process, Skinner shares that the messiness and rawness of the characters he creates is often reflected in his praxis—music up, words (no matter what they are) spilled onto the page. In fact, I take his advice as I write this piece. Typically so bound by my own critical mind as I write—my creativity hobbled by the phantom “audience” I envision reading my words—I feel myself open up to his logos. Whether or not Skinner’s wisdom has served this final product…Well, I suppose the verdict is up to you all, the real audience. Witness me, witnessing him.

Photographed by Cody Cloud at Defacto Inc

Styled by Edwin Ortega

Written by Anna Ely

Hair: Ryan Taniguchi

Grooming: Laurel Charleston at Opus Beauty using Danessa Myricks

Production Assistant: Ethan Schlesinger.