“I wanted to do everything once I was out and performing. I wanted to play every character.”

Benito Skinner

In his new series, Overcompensating, the 31-year-old comedian joins stars such as Megan Fox, Kaia Gerber, and Charli XCX to tell his coming-out story

By Paulina Prosnitz

Benito Skinner never wanted to play football. “I hated everything about it,” says the 31-year-old comedian known as Benny Drama. He only signed up in the fourth grade after falling in love with his best friend, who played on the team at their Catholic elementary school in Boise, Idaho. The boy ended up moving away the following year—“I hope he’s well. I hope he’s gay!”—but Benito kept playing through high school, ultimately becoming the star wide receiver. “It gave me this shield, and it felt almost comfortable to me to have that—it was like a true costume in every way.”

Today, Skinner has 1.3 million followers on Instagram under the username @bennydrama7. He rose to fame for posting impressions of stars during the coronavirus pandemic, when Vogue called him “the only funny thing to happen to 2020.” Now he’s putting the costume of the closeted jock back on in Overcompensating, an eight-part comedy that he wrote, is the executive producer of, and stars in. The TV show, which premiered this week, features Connie Britton and Kyle MacLachlan, with cameos by Bowen Yang, Kaia Gerber, Megan Fox, and Charli XCX.