What started as a labyrinthine setup involving the pair escaping from “a cult, and then we hide in a foster family and pretend to be kids”, was soon streamlined into the premise for Pen15. Erskine recalls visiting a disenchanted Konkle’s apartment, “and you were like: ‘I might give up, I might go to India. But the plan was always to write something more substantial. They created a webseries together called Project Reality (now sadly removed from the internet) in which they played “these really odd outcasts.
#MAYA PEN15 SERIES#
“That happened, thankfully.”Īfter graduating, the pair became jobbing actors in New York (Erskine was a series regular in Insecure, Konkle had a lead role in the police procedural Rosewood). “It was a mix of really admiring her work and then getting to know her and being like: ‘I want to be best friends,’” says Konkle of the attraction. The pair met in Amsterdam during an intensive experimental theatre course that formed part of their studies at New York University. In real life, Konkle spent her childhood on the east coast with “hippy” parents – “There was an earthy, crunchy vibe in my house” – and Erskine in LA, where she lived with her mother and father, a jazz drummer who was in Weather Report. The pair didn’t actually know each other at school, but their “really close, intense, wild, funny friendship” provides the foundation for Pen15, a bond reimagined using memories from their respective teenage years. “I wish we were,” says Erskine, longingly. “We’re roommates!” jokes Konkle, when I ask if they are in the same place (I meant city). Konkle and Erskine are both Zooming in from LA. In 30 years, I’m going to look back and be like: ‘Well, that fucked me up.’ Or: ‘That was so healing.’ Or somewhere in the middle.” It’s a weird social experiment we’ve done to ourselves. It feels like resolution after all of this pain we’ve pushed down.” Konkle agrees. “When you’re reliving it, it seems like torture. Erskine recalls “hysterically crying” while filming certain scenes. “That was my experience growing up as the tall girl: the boys I had crushes on were a foot or two shorter,” says Konkle.įor its makers, Pen15 is a bittersweet form of catharsis. A recurring visual gag has schmaltzy ballads playing over slo-mo footage of their very small love interests. For Maya this means clumsily trying to disguise the fact she’s got her period, while Anna hunches over self-consciously in order to better match the height of her crush, Alex. But as the show progresses their physicality becomes increasingly believable: after all, many 13-year-old girls are saddled with adult bodies before their male counterparts. Initially, the image of these 33-year-old women playing their tweenage selves is ridiculous, recalling the cartoonish comedy Wet Hot American Summer. Neither popular nor social pariahs, they spend most of their lives in hot pursuit of their crushes: tiny young men who brutally reject them at every turn. Maya is a goofy class clown, Anna is a keen singer with a fractious home life both have very prominent braces. Set at the turn of the millennium, the show catches the fictionalised Maya and Anna at a very awkward moment: no longer girls, not yet women, they still play Sylvanian Families, but also practise snogging in the mirror.
0 kommentar(er)
