Wally baram gay
As Mama Ru wisely observes, we’re all born naked and the rest is drag. Each one of us is projecting an image—consciously or otherwise—that influences the way the world views us. On the verge of adulthood, surrounded by other teenagers trying to come across themselves at college, it is simple to become a little too self-conscious about how we want to be seen. That declare becomes even more heightened if you’ve got a classified that you’re trying to cover up. You tend to overcompensate.
That is the case for Benny (creator-writer-star Benito Skinner), a former lofty school football hero and homecoming king who is struggling to accept that he his queer , let alone contribute his sexuality with anyone around him. Deep down he’s known all his life. The eight-episode series opens with a young Benny (Austin Kurtis) enraptured by a scantily-clad Brendan Fraser in George of the Jungle, rewatching the same moment on repeat on his treasured DVD until his friends tease him about it.
Cut to the display day and his arrival as a freshman at Yates, where his older sister Grace (Mary Beth Barone) is already well established as part of the college’s cold set. She clearly resents Benny
The Problem With Overcompensating
Watching all eight episodes of Overcompensating—the new Amazon Prime Video comedy drama created by and starring social media star Benito Skinner—several questions crossed my mind. For instance: When exactly is this supposed to be set? We’re told right away that Skinner’s traits Benny, a closeted male lover college freshman, had his sexual awakening watching a loincloth-clad Brendan Fraser swing through the trees in George of the Jungle (1997), and that he’s around 9 in the year 2000 when Britney Spears’ “Lucky” was still in the countdown. By my math, that should mean Benny is heading off to college around 2010. Yet at one point in the display, Charli XCX—who is, along with Jonah Hill, among the series’ executive producers—shows up to inexplicably execute at this fictional college, singing songs that she released in 2012, 2014, and 2017. That would make Overcompensating … not a show that takes place today? But also not a specifically millennial period piece? It’s all very puzzling.
The bigger and more profound question, though, is not about Overcompensating’s time period, but about its core: Who, exactly, is this for? The show follows Benny,
Wally Baram Is the Breakout Star of Your Next Favorite Comedy
Wally Baram originally wanted to be a cowgirl. But after taking equestrian classes at her Central California lofty school, she changed her mind. “That was way too much labor,” says Baram, who stars in the fresh Prime Video series Overcompensating. “My body’s clearly not built for lifting and riding, and my legs don’t fit around a horse quite so much.”
Instead, Baram chose a different, perhaps just as laborious career path: becoming a stand-up comic, sitcom writer, and performer. “My other odd pipe dream was comedy,” she says. “I was in the business of exploring dreams then.” So, she took a gap year before going to college just to test the waters. “I was appreciate, ‘Let’s see if this is something, and then if not, I’ll just go and research economics and perform that.’”
Baram did go to college after the gap year, but comedy clubs continued to call her label, and she she dropped out a year and a half later. She’s been on stage since she was about 18 years old, and performed around the region. She then took on writing jobs at hit television shows Shrinking and What We Accomplish in the Shadows, before landing at Overcompensating, Ben
Overcompensating is a new television series on Prime Video where a closeted college trainee explores his identity and navigates relationships.
Leading the cast are two openly lgbtq+ performers coming from comedic backgrounds. Benito Skinner plays Benny, a former football star facing his freshman year in college.
Born in Boise, Idaho, he attended Bishop Kelly Sky-high School, where he was a wide receiver in real life in the football team. He later attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He became a social media luminary and performed his show Overcompensating in New York. This led to starring, writing and executive producing the eight-episode series released through Prime Video.
Wally Baram brings Carmen to life as Benny’s best friend at the school. In actual life, Baram brings stand-up comedy experience to the table and has written for hit shows, such as Shrinking and What We Do in the Shadows.
The talented duo traveled to Chicago for a screenin
Wally Baram knows just how to make you laugh
Actor and journalist Wally Baram knows a thing or two about overcompensating. It’s something she did chronically at university (Barnard College, to be exact – she dropped out after a year) before cutting her teeth in stand-up comedy, and later, TV writing (Shrinking, What We Do in the Shadows).
Fitting, then, that the 27 year old’s first screen role should be in a show that’s actually called Overcompensating, Benito Skinner’s A24-produced, biographical comedy about a jock who slowly finds his way out of the closet at university. Wally’s character, Carmen, is key to this process: as she befriends Benny almost immediately, what starts off as a prospective romantic partnership (much to his horror) soon becomes an iron-clad friendship. Carmen should’ve acknowledged Benny was gay from the jump, really: his complimentary comments about Lorde’s songwriting abilities were a glaring clue. But she gets there in the terminate, and that’s what matters.
“Carmen is very much me: an awkward, frizzy-haired teen from New Jersey who just wants to detect her people but can’t quite get it right,” Wally says, calling in fr