At the center of every opera is a great romance, and PEN15’s is between its two leads. Could we just hint at the temple?’ And we’re like, ‘Hell no,’” Konkle says. I had no action in middle school, but I was masturbating like crazy. “It was raw. And there's this sort of circle of identity that you're forming together. “Maya and I are best friends in real life, and ‘Pen15’ started in our living room four years before it went to series. Erskine and Konkle attended middle school far from each other: Erskine went to the Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, California, while Konkle grew up in Massachusetts. Without Erskine by her side, Konkle is certain she would not have had the support or the courage to be so open on-screen. I was boy crazy,” she says. “We realized how much we loved writing,” says Erskine. Central to Season 2, similarly, is the divorce of Anna’s parents, which reflects pretty closely Konkle’s own experiences. That manifested in large and small ways. Growing up in suburban Scituate, Massachusetts, she’d had a different junior-high experience. And let's keep going, you know? I think that the version of me in PEN15 was more me in fourth and fifth grade. This season her character’s story revolves around that most dreaded, or anticipated, middle school moment: the first kiss. It is, you know? Pen15 is set in 2000 but it's not overwrought with cultural references; there are landlines, Spice Girls references and subtleties such as Anna assuring Maya that she is "a rainbow gel pen in a sea of blue and black writing utensils" – and it's not a nostalgia piece. The streamer is building a burgeoning slate of R-rated comedies, which Springborn points out all have female friendships at their core (think “Dollface,” “Shrill” and the recently canceled “High Fidelity”). The show is a reflection of “our actual best-friendship,” Konkle says. We didn’t get in the flow as much as we used to because we would just be finding the story, the arc of the scene, and then suddenly you’re signed out. An episode that feels like a tipping point delivers the first high-level casualty of the Fadda-Cannon conflict. I thought I was gonna go to jail. They were romantic. “That didn’t just happen at that age; I feel [it] continued throughout my 20s really,” Erskine says. By. I think as I got older I just learned that I'm going to keep some of those things to myself. Jenna Scherer According to Vulture, the friendship that Maya Ishii-Peters and Anna Kone share on the show is as dedicated as the one Erskine and Konkle have in real life. The kid wasn’t actually in the shot — PEN15 is about childhood traumas; it doesn’t want to cause them. Erskine recalls her real-life debut smooch as “a huge thing for me.” She didn’t make lip-to-lip contact until ninth grade, but not for want of trying. Konkle and Erskine, ruling middle school. But other than a socially distanced paddle at Konkle’s pool a few weeks back (Erskine’s mask got soaking wet; Konkle wore three for good measure), it’s clear the two severely miss each other, as friends and creative partners. Erskine and Konkle, both 33 (and born exactly one month apart), have stressed all along that Maya and Anna are not exactly akin to teen versions of themselves. “Daddy’s always taken the six-foot social-distance rule with me.”, “I’d like to start by tearing you a new one.”, Get Into ‘Position’ for Ariana Grande’s New Single, Christopher Cross Reveals COVID-19 Almost Killed Him, “There was some, you know, come-to-Jesus moments or whatever.”. “We did treat the first season like it was maybe our only season, so we packed it with the biggest firsts that happened to us,” Erskine says. Thank you. Co-creators Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle (both 33) star as teenage versions of themselves, surrounded by actual teenage actors, which adds … “From Tiffany’s. It's great. I can be like delusional[ly] optimistic, and that can be good and bad, and so that's still with me. The confusion of seeing her parents apart yet together comes to a head for Anna in Episode 3, when she and Maya run away to the forest and pretend to be witches, performing a pseudo-exorcism. “We are two separate actors, we are two separate writers, but I can’t imagine going throughout life and not making more together,” Erskine says. ... And they came up with a really brilliant nickname called "Ice Box" ... and that followed me till I graduated high school. Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Hulu The kicker is, it worked: The very next day, the girl broke up him. Last year's first season opened with Anna and Maya being naively excited about starting middle school, only for reality to kick in when Maya shows up with a bowl haircut from her mum (played by Erskine's own mother, Mutsuko Erskine) who has tried to fix Maya's attempt at layering her hair. So many moments on the show feel so painfully real that you can't help but wonder while watching: is PEN15 based on a true story? This was a dress rehearsal for the students, so it wasn't even a performance with adults, and my pad flew out onto the stage. Comedy duo Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle have barely settled into their seats at a Silver Lake coffee shop when they learn Scott Speedman — the quintessential brooding heartthrob for a … Anna watches her parents' marriage fall apart, and feels uncomfortable at home. A conflict-averse episode centers on the revelation of a long-held secret that doesn’t have any consequences. hide caption, "There's not a lot of heroic acts in middle school ..." says PEN15 creator and star Maya Erskine (left, shown here with co-creator and co-star Anna Konkle). Eventually, she’d transferred to a performing-arts high school in East L.A. Their “ESP” connection is on full display when Erskine and Konkle jump on a Zoom call to talk about the upcoming second season, for which they had to finish post-production from home, like so many producers amid the pandemic chaos. Look, you’re going to have to watch it for yourself. “But I feel like my life as a boy was simpler. It got them thinking. “The things you pretend aren’t happening.”. That didn’t happen. “You are my rainbow gel pen in a sea of blue and black writing utensils,” Anna tells Maya at the end of the first episode. Log in or link your magazine subscription. But what we do is we just have Anna be there for her and acknowledge it. “Pen15” is a show about firsts, and without that partnership forged from the growing pains of performing and creating under pressure, Konkle and Erskine may never have made their first series together, let alone one that is so deeply personal to them. On how Maya hid her period from her parents and everyone for a year. In Episode 6, “Posh,” Maya the character is racially profiled by her peers, and afterward stares at herself in the mirror and tries to make her eyes look wider in a wordless moment of self-hatred. “Your first period. The stars of Hulu's 'Pen15,' Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, curated a playlist for Cosmo. And they pull it off while interacting seamlessly with a cast of real teenagers, all of whom are terrific actors. But she was waitressing 50 hours a week, and her most notable role had been in an obscure production in which she “held a leash with five guys at the end of it, barking,” she says. Write it out. “It’s totally wild,” Konkle says. “We had mutual friends,” Erskine says at an Italian restaurant near the Galleria. Erskine: I think my fear of letting go of childhood was a huge issue for me. In their new Hulu show, PEN15, Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle play themselves as teens, in horrifying, hilarious detail. But... ERSKINE: We just spent a lot of days together. “I burst out crying too because it just went like that,” says Erskine, darting her tongue in and out like a lizard. So Konkle started waiting tables full-time at restaurants like Craftbar and Prune, and Erskine moved back to her native Los Angeles, where she’d gotten a part in an all–Asian American production of Crimes of the Heart. Watch the trailer below. KONKLE: And now they know. Still, the long look that she and the actor exchange before the camera cuts away was unsettling to film. Its creators want you to feel something, but they don’t want you to feel bad. I feel like I came back. Erskine and Konkle committed to them with the intensity of, well, graduates of a high-pressure drama school. “Ooooh.” She pulls up short in front of a rack of magnetic earrings. And what I didn't have at that time was someone to acknowledge it because I couldn't even acknowledge it. And she may not understand it fully. “My mantra had been, ‘As long as I’m making art I will be happy, even if I have to sleep on a mattress on the floor,’ ” she says.
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