Maya: Oh that’s such a deeply kind way to talk about our show, thank you for saying that. But the humor adds an edge, yet the humor is so deeply loving. Unlike a lot of shows dealing with the pain of adolescence, you’re not mocking anyone. The capacity to go back in time, recognize these devastating moments and reframe them. There’s a saying, “Honesty without compassion is cruelty.” The level of honesty mixed with so much compassion, which you offer your characters and by extension to your audience – it’s astonishing. LA: On PEN15, I am so deeply in love with the way you hold people, in that raw place many of us have, the intense generosity toward those who are wounding and the wounded. I think we took that to a further extreme this season. And the metaphor of playing 13, that these things we’re dealing with now have always been there, and disliking the parts of yourself that aren’t pristinely good, whatever that means, and sort of rewriting to the reject parts of ourselves, who are beautiful and acceptable, and the things that I’ve hidden, which may make some people cringe – we’re going to celebrate the fact that we’re the main characters in this TV show and not apologize for it. I think that’s the journey I’m still on as an adult. Because that’s the compassion, every character has the capacity to do the wrong thing in moments – whatever that means. One of the things that I admire about Maya, which we wanted to infuse the show with, is that, when there’s truth involved and we’re trying to hold up a mirror to our memories and the truth of a full human, that means that our main characters can’t be… that it’s okay for them to fuck up, and it’s okay for them to, at moments in a story, be the villains – even though they’re our protagonists. Laura Albert interviews Anna Konkle & Maya Erskine of PEN15 for ContentMode But to quote the closing line from the film Stand by Me, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?” In real-life both women have entered motherhood only months apart, and Reddit groups are already fantasizing of MOM30 possibilities. This is the end of the PEN15 series, as Maya and Anna leave us with the open-ended hope for their continued friendship. But the way they locate and bolster one another is the constant glorious beating heart of PEN15. ![]() ![]() The cognitive dissonance adds to their outsider status in the ruthless popularity hierarchy of middle school. Adding to their travails, Maya, who is mixed race, endures microaggressions, while Anna is the go-between in her parents’ messy divorce. The convert I’ve targeted invariably asks, So what’s it about? As soon as I explain, “Well, two women in their thirties play 13-year-olds in the year 2000,” I then assure them, you’ve never seen a take quite like this one, where the traumatic territory of adolescence is mined for humor while managing to avoid transgression and sentimentality. Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, the creators and co-stars of PEN15, are so committed to their roles that it’s easy to forget you are actually watching adult women navigate 7th grade, surrounded by a teen cast. “You must watch PEN15!” I’ve found myself fervently pleading to the uninitiated.
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