Benito Skinner & Charli XCX DM'd. An A24 Show & Wild Soundtrack Followed
Rob LeDonne talks to the smash creator-turned-TV comedy star about the music in 'Overcompensating' and how it happened
Hello, and welcome to a special free Monday edition of Like & Subscribe. Today I’m bringing you an interview between The Ankler contributor Rob LeDonne and comedian Benito Skinner, who after rising to fame on social media has loosely adapted his coming-out story for the small screen with the upcoming series Overcompensating on Amazon’s Prime Video. I’ve been looking forward to this show for a while because I was curious how Skinner’s brand of TikTok comedy would translate to the big screen. Now that I’ve seen an early preview, I’ll tell you that Overcompensating features several playful winks at Skinner’s online roots. His just might be the playbook for other creators looking to break through in Hollywood. I’ll write more about the show closer to its May 15 premiere date. But in the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy Rob’s story about how Skinner wove timeless pop tunes into the show. — Natalie
Rob LeDonne writes The Ankler’s Notable, a newsletter about where Hollywood and music meet. He spoke to White Lotus composer Cristobal Tapia de Veer about his feud with show creator Mike White and interviewed every Oscar song nominee this year, including the winning husband-wife duo behind the music of Emilia Pérez. He’s at rob@theankler.com
As someone who is known to stalk on Instagram until my eyes are falling out of my noggin, I’ve been familiar with the work of Benito Skinner for some time and it’s been incredible to watch his rise.
I remember when he broke out pre-pandemic as @BennyDrama7 (he has 1.3 million followers on Instagram and 1.4 million on TikTok), where he’d regularly post unhinged sketches, many focused on the gay experience — my friends and I would regularly share them and cackle. From his spoofs of the Kardashians (where he’d dress in full drag) to his Shawn Mendes impression to a diabolical series where he’s feuding with his boyfriend’s mother (played by his own), he became a darling of the LGBTQ community.
Now, Skinner has also become a fixture on red carpets and at Hollywood awards events as he gears up to break out into the mainstream with his A24 series, Overcompensating. Premiering May 15 on Amazon’s Prime Video and produced by Jonah Hill’s Strong Baby productions, the show is a stylish and funny autobiographical look at a closeted jock as he navigates college. It takes its name and theme from a stage show Skinner first began performing back in 2018.
Skinner, 31, mostly pulls off playing college freshman Benny (don’t worry, this isn’t a Grease situation) in a series that chronicles, as he told me, the most “disturbing, funny, traumatic, psychotic and sad times” in his own life while growing up in Idaho and attending Georgetown University, where he came out during his senior year. Much of Overcompensating’s humor derives from Benny’s attempts to tamp down his sexuality and assimilate into college’s bro-y culture — hence the title.
In the opening scene, we see Benny awaken in his college dorm to the sound of the gay national anthem (the Britney Spears classic “Lucky,” of course), and from those first chords, it’s apparent that the music in the series takes center stage. While the show is smartly murky on what year it takes place, the soundtrack is rich with placements of the actual pop hits that played in Skinner’s youth. In fact, I was wowed by the array of songs the production licensed, including massive cuts from the likes of Lady Gaga to Nicki Minaj. I guess I know where my Prime subscription money is going.
Perhaps more impressive, Skinnner managed to woo none other than the brat queen herself, Charli XCX, to compose an original score for the series, recruiting her well before her brat era — the result of him approaching her at a party (where else?) and tipsily inviting her to be part of the show. After reading the script, Charli promptly said yes and recruited an array of equally buzzy talent to join the ranks, from The Japanese House (the nom de plume of Amber Bain) to The 1975’s George Daniel, who also happens to be Charli’s fiancé. In other words, while the series isn’t a straight-up musical, it may as well be.
Ahead of the premiere, Skinner gave me the scoop on the music of Overcompensating. Our conversation was fun, manic and had a lot of heart, just like the show.
Rob LeDonne: When during the process of putting together Overcompensating did you realize you wanted to put together a bangin’ soundtrack, as the kids say?
Benito Skinner: I think from the dawn of writing it; I wrote every song that I wanted in the show into the pilot. I knew that I wanted to start with “Lucky” and I knew that “Vroom Vroom” from Charli XCX was going to be in there, and Lorde’s “Team.” It was always a part of it because I feel like in college, music taste was such a currency. So if I wanted to transport people to this kind of nostalgic world of college that we’re building here, I thought music would be the way. It’s how I write and it’s how I was approaching some of these feelings and getting back into this headspace of those days. So every episode is named after one of the songs that’s in it. I kind of feel the show is a playlist, and when I listen to some of these songs, they take me back to either the most heartbreaking or disturbing, funny, traumatic, psychotic and sad times in my life. And between A24 and Amazon, everyone was down for like a really fantastic music budget. That was something we weren’t gonna skimp on.
RL: That was actually one of my main thoughts watching it, because I know licensing these major pop songs, from Nicki Minaj’s “Super Bass” to Britney Spears and the rest can get very expensive. How did you go about scoring these major placements?
BS: I wrote a lot of letters to pop stars and I made sure they knew how important these songs were and to get people into the emotional state of these characters.
RL: Who did you write to and what did you say?
BS: For Britney Spears, I did write a letter. I don’t know who approved it, but in my heart of hearts, she saw it. I essentially said, “This music means so much to me, my story and the story I want to tell of these kids that want to be loved so desperately but go about it in all the wrong ways.” We also use Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory,” and I know that it was pitched to her team at some point, and her manager said to me, “They pitched saying in the scene the kid is doing poppers,” and I think the team was like, “Wait, we need more information.” In the end, they graciously said yes. I don’t know exactly what those conversations were like, but I hope that they chuckled. But Jen Malone was our music supervisor and is so brilliant, and we had to go get these songs by any means necessary.
RL: Music and fandom of these singers is such a part of the gay experience and I was trying to think of why that is, and the only thing I came up with is that if you’re living this insular life when you’re younger, music becomes an outlet and can be intensely personal. Added to that is that you’re seeing these artists be bold and be themselves, which can be the opposite of your regular life if you’re closeted. Would you agree with that?
BS: Absolutely. When I got into my car at the end of the day in high school, and I could roll up the windows and lock the doors and play Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” or “Lucky” or Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster, I could feel empowered, and I that empowerment was the only little moment of joy I could feel. Or even my self-expression and sexual expression. Seeing these people who are fully confident and realized, I think is also something important. I also just love performance. Like, when I saw Gaga perform “Paparazzi” on the VMAs in 2009. . .
RL: Can I just brag and say I was there working as an assistant, and it was incredible.
BS: Don’t say some shit like that. That’s crazy. That’s curtains for me. I mean, I’ve seen that performance so many times. But even someone like Britney; she’s someone you can pour your devotion, love and energy into. I think that’s another part of the show.
RL: You recruited Charli XCX to help concoct the soundtrack well before her brat era. How did you ask her and what was she like to collaborate with?
BS: We had DM’d a little bit and expressed love of each other’s work for a time. One day I came up to her at a party and said, “Will you fully score my show that hasn’t even been sold or pitched yet?” and she said, “Send me the script.” And I sent it to her. And I think she saw herself in it. She knew what we wanted to do, and she has such an unbelievable love for music. Including her was so obvious to me. She has songs that are big, insane and full of confidence where she’s like “I’m a bitch and I’m having so much fun” and then songs like “I’m so insecure and I never wanna be at parties again.”
RL: Does this mean we can expect new and original Charli songs in the show?
BS: It’s more score, and you hear her voice kind of pop through. If we were going to have new songs, I think it would potentially tie you into the present moment. Aside from that, we did do a remix for “I Love It” (Icona Pop’s track featuring Charli) in the trailer which I’m so excited for everyone to hear. We use a lot of her songs obviously in the show. There’s one moment that stuck with me the most, which was with Carmen in the second episode in the Domino’s parking lot. Charli and Amber Bain had sent me it, and the team had done this brilliant thing where it’s a little bit of Amber’s voice and a little bit of Charli’s trying to come through and it keeps getting stifled. And I’m like, “God, this is so what it felt like being in the closet.” If people are expecting a full Charli album, like brat 2, that’s not what this is. I think she really approached it as like a true composer, and this team approached it in that way as well.
For one scene, Charli and George Daniel made this psychotic anthem for a video game we have on the show called Slut Larry — and it’s one of my favorite things; I listen to it every day, so hopefully that will be released to the masses at some point.
RL: Charli also cameos in Overcompensating, playing a heightened version of herself where she says at one point “You think I want to play ‘Boom Clap’ in a fucking college? Are you fucking joking?” How did you get her to be self-deprecating like that?
BS: You know, she’s a brilliant actress as well. So if we were gonna have her in the show, I was like, “I want you to have a game.” So tapping into the emotions of an artist, are they loving playing at colleges while everyone is trashed in the audience and throwing up? I can’t imagine playing songs that are about your heartbreak, your real life that you poured your whole soul into, performing for kids who are all on Molly. So I thought, “Let’s let some of that trauma out in this scene.” She was so game and so was her team. We wrote that episode with Mitra Jouhari and we just kept laughing, thinking to turn her into a total monster. I didn’t just want her to play herself. Let’s be psycho Charli, who’s freaking out at her manager.
RL: When it comes to the music, like you said Amber Bain, also known as The Japanese House, also contributed material. Can you speak on that collaboration?
BS: She’s brilliant. I have never seen such an egoless workflow in the way everybody contributed. George would send beats and then Amber would send vocals and, and or full songs and then Alex Somers would take them and then add piano or guitar. All of them were so down to collaborate. But this was Amber’s first time working on anything like this and I think a true genius is born; she has such a knack for it. It was the honor of life to work with them, and I think it was the most fun part I think of the process to an extent, because I didn’t have to make the music. I got to just watch all these scenes in the show set to my favorite musicians.
RL: So I guess it’s safe to say that music inspires your writing. Can you talk to me about how music inspires your process?
BS: I always wrote all of my sketches to music; I’d always have a song in mind. It’s important because I tie so much emotion to it, and so I knew what song was going to play when people got their heart broken in the show, or in the party scenes. I had this playlist while I was writing — and also when we were editing — of all these songs that I loved in college, all these Charli songs that I loved. It was the easiest way to just get back into this mindset and get back into the feelings of that time and to access those feelings for me. In college, I always had my headphones in, and I was always living in someone else’s life or a fantasy life in my head.
RL: Would you play the songs on set? I think Scorsese would do something like that when he’d film.
BS: Yeah, we did in the opening scene of the series, where it’s cut to “Lucky” and we had to time the opening knocks in that song. Or before shooting a party scene, we were blasting “Team” by Lorde, which plays in the actual scene.
RL: The show has been in the works since 2018 in some capacity and then Covid and the strikes all got in the way. How did you grapple with such a long gestation period considering you originally came from the much-faster world of social media?
BS: It’s the opposite cadence of how I would do things on the internet. When I do a sketch online, I think of the idea on the weekend, write it on Sunday, shoot it on Monday, edit until Wednesday and release it on Friday morning. Working on the show for so long, I feel lucky because I had so much time to flesh out exactly what I wanted and build the team exactly the way I wanted it. To think about the cast all these years, to think about where I wanted to take the story. Nothing felt rushed and I feel fortunate for that. But I have to find a positive in this because, yeah, I definitely thought this would take like a year or two once we sold it. But I think in the end the show benefits from it. All the while, I can’t imagine how many Pinterest boards I made, how many playlists I made, how many scenes I wrote just for fun. So I think in the end I would love season two to happen, fast.
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