The cause was German playwright Bertolt Brecht. “We had mutual friends,” Erskine says at an Italian restaurant near the Galleria. They met their junior year of college, in a study-abroad workshop in Amsterdam for NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where they were both pursuing degrees in experimental theater. “But is it weird,” Konkle asks me, “that people are going to think our show is called Penis?”Įrskine and Konkle didn’t meet in seventh grade. And now, Erskine and Konkle, a pair of drama school graduates whose names sound more like a law firm in Queens than ascendant comedy stars, are on the verge of becoming popular. Specifically, the ones from the Lonely Island, who signed on to produce PEN15. And how, by sticking together and staying true to themselves, they were able to forge a unique and exciting sensibility, one that eventually attracted the attention of the popular boys. Their friendship is not just about encouraging each other to experiment with new accessories it’s about two outsiders who struggled to make it in an industry that is notoriously even more shallow and cruel than middle school. “I think it looks really natural on you,” says her friend warmly. “I feel like it doesn’t work on me,” worries Konkle, peering into the mirror. “I keep thinking of like a really thin gold nose ring.” “I kind of want one right here,” she tells Erskine, tapping the side of her nose. “Ooooh.” She pulls up short in front of a rack of magnetic earrings. The show is a reflection of “our actual best-friendship,” Konkle says. “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. It feels almost operatic.”Īt the center of every opera is a great romance, and PEN15’s is between its two leads. You’re a mini-adult but also a complete kid. “There are so many highs and lows, your body is betraying you, you’re growing these boobs and getting pubic hair and having insane hormones. She flicks a manicured hand through a rack at Claire’s, the omnipresent accessories chain whose glittering baubles have caused many an adolescent to dash themselves on the rocks of reinvention. “No one really feels like they fit in,” says Erskine, who like her co-star is real-life attractive, with shiny hair and straight Hollywood teeth. It’s the first indication they’re not going to fit in very well in middle school, which is the point. Chief among their physical issues, however, is that they are 30-somethings playing tweens and, as such, look ridiculous standing next to their cast, made up of real-life seventh-graders. Erskine tapes down her chest and sports a bowl haircut, a result of her character’s attempt to cut “layers” the night before the first day of school. Onscreen Konkle, who is tall and blonde, wears braces and self-consciously hunches her shoulders. The joke, as anyone who went to middle school knows, is that it won’t be. Set in the year 2000, the ten-episode series, named after a common schoolyard prank, begins with the two best friends preparing for their first day of middle school: “Seventh grade is gonna be amazing,” the pair gummily enthuse over their see-through landline phones. As the stars and creators of PEN15, a weird and wonderful new show on Hulu, they play Anna Kone and Maya Ishii-Peters, characters based on their seventh-grade selves. Of course, they’ve had plenty of practice.
“Are you going to get your ears pierced?” Konkle, 31, asks Erskine, also 31. Necklace by Tiffany.Īnna Konkle and Maya Erskine have been in the Claire’s accessories store at the Galleria mall in Glendale, California, for approximately five minutes, and they already sound like teenagers. Styling by Olga Yanul hair by Sunnie Brook makeup by Christian McCulloch.
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