Prime Video‘s Overcompensating captures the highs, the lows, and the absurdities of college life in a way creator Benito Skinner hopes will feel both very personal and very universal at the same time.
Loosely inspired by Skinner’s own experience, the eight-episode series strikes a difficult balance tonally, from laugh-out-loud funny to poignant to incredibly embarrassing and everything in between. Skinner explained that the way to do that is through experimentation.
“You try everything and see,” Skinner said during a conversation at the Deadline Studio at Prime Experience. “If any moment feels like, ‘Oh, we’re supposed to feel something different there,’ let’s pull back. I think a good example is the scene where Grace is with Janet in the sixth episode, they’re kind of having this emotional little connection, and we did have someone off camera say, ‘Is it time for me to wipe you now?’ And we were like, ‘Maybe we don’t need that.’”
Finding the right balance, though, can have a huge emotional payoff for the audience.
“There’s something that happens, I think…to the vulnerability of when you’re laughing, and then something happens that you didn’t see coming,” showrunner Scott King added. “I just feel like you feel it that much more, because you’re just off guard.”
At the Deadline Studio, Skinner and King were joined by much of the principal cast, including Wally Baram and Mary Beth Barone, who were also writers, as well as Adam DiMarco, Kyle MacLachlan, Connie Britton, and Owen Thiele.
“This is my dream cast. The show is exactly what it needs to be,” Skinner proudly proclaimed, adding that he’s only been more inspired to continue the story by watching each of them embody their characters.
“What a gift that all of these people, I’m like, ‘I wanna see you do that, and I wanna see you do that.’ And that, I think, is the mark of a cast that is just right,” he said.
To his credit, the cast says they felt similarly after reading the Overcompensating pilot—like this was exactly the project they’d been looking for.
Scott King, Connie Britton, Owen Thiele, Mary Beth Barone, Kyle MacLachlan, Adam DiMarco, Wally Baram, Benito Skinner at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Benito Skinner at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025 on May 22, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Wally Baram at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025 on May 22, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Connie Britton at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025 on May 22, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Owen Thiele at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025 on May 22, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Adam DiMarco at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025 on May 22, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Kyle MacLachlan at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025 on May 22, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Scott King and Wally Baram at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Connie Britton at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025 on May 22, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Mary Beth Barone at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025 on May 22, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Benito Skinner and Adam DiMarco at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Scott King and Owen Thiele at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
Kyle MacLachlan and Mary Beth Barone at the Deadline Hollywood Portrait Studio at Prime Experience 2025
Anthony Avellano for Deadline
“I just think you read a lot of scripts as an actor and a writer, and so few you find yourself laughing out loud while you’re reading them. So there were so many moments that…were very specific, even though they were addressing these archetypal characters that I think maybe people feel like they might have seen before,” Barone said. “Those those little moments that Benny is so good at picking out for the characters, it just felt unlike anything I’d ever read before. There were even things in stage direction. I hope the scripts get published one day, because there are so many jokes. I never read a script that had jokes in the stage direction like that.”
Should they get the green light for a second season, they all agree the well of ideas and inspiration is far from dry.
“What’s interesting to me about this idea of overcompensation with these characters is that at no point do you stop doing that completely. So I think I’m really inspired by the thought that if anyone has a comfort blanket, we take it away,” Skinner said. “I want to see them start over in a lot of ways, and I think that’s what that ending tells you might happen. Now, some truths are out there, but I don’t think you stop overcompensating in the moment the truth is out there too. But, like, also spring break.”