Benito Skinner Responds To The Overcompensating Age Backlash
"We join a long line of American classics where the actors are playing characters not their age."
Overcompensating requires some suspension of disbelief. The coming-of-age comedy is primarily about college freshmen... but the actors playing the teenage characters are nearly twice as old as their roles. It’s a choice that caused a bit of controversy at first, but creator and star Benito Skinner doesn’t see it as that that huge of an issue.
Upon Overcompensating’s release in mid-May, several reviews and social media posts called out the noticeable age discrepancies in the main cast. Skinner, 31, Wally Baram, 27, Rish Shah, 27, and Holmes, 32, all play 18-19-year-old college freshmen. Mary Beth Barone, 33, plays an early-20s junior, and Adam DiMarco, 35, plays an early-20s senior.
Skinner and Barone brought up the age discourse during the May 28 episode of their Ride podcast. “These are all conversations [we had],” Skinner noted, with Barone adding that “a lot of thought has been put into every single detail of the show.”
The sexual content in the series factored into why Skinner wanted to go with an older cast. “All of the characters sexualize themselves, and I think that us having space from that time in our life allows both audiences and us to be more comfortable seeing this on screen,” Skinner said. “I get what you’re saying, but at the same time I wanted it to live in this Y2K, nostalgic, sweaty, nasty American fantasy but then we make it gay.”
Barone added that she thinks audiences are starting to see why casting millennials was important for the show’s tone. “I’ve seen a slight shift in the discourse, where people are saying, ‘I wouldn’t want younger actors to play those parts, and they wouldn't be able to nail the millennial cringe of that time period,’” she said.
The two pointed out that older actors playing high school and college-aged parts is nothing new. “I think we join a long line of American classics where the actors are playing characters that are not their age,” Skinner said, before listing off some examples with Barone: “Glee, The OC, American Pie, Gossip Girl, Grease, Euphoria, Outer Banks.”
