PEN15 Digs Into Gross, Embarrassing, Puberty Humor In Surprisingly Relatable Ways

PEN15 isn't what you expect from a women puberty show.


Very much set in the early 2000s, co-creators Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle star as versions of themselves at 13 alongside a cast made up of actual tweens. Thanks to their decorating and behaviors, their age difference is, surprisingly, almost ignorable — up until you snap out of your nostalgia-induced trance and visualize that one of these 31-year-olds is taunting an actual 13-year-old about wedgies.


It’s a hilarious visual, nevertheless the physical appearance of the show actually isn’t where most of its humor comes from. That’s noticed in the swinging emotions and exaggerated exasperation of Erskine’s and Konkle’s portrayals of young Maya and Anna as they navigate things that most pubescent teens, at some point, do. Take, as an example, the below clip, as soon as once a dead-serious moment practicing kissing on bed posts abruptly turns into peak-terror screaming at Anna’s dad to “Get out!!!”


With all of its overdramatic honesty, PEN15 — which premieres all of its episodes on Hulu Friday, February 8 — lets you look back on puberty as a really funny time, reframing the life-or-death memories have and you could visualize yourself for the irrational, and completely regular, young teen you were. Erskine and Konkle talked with MTV News about making puberty funny. Check out the conversation below.


MTV News: Why did you desire to set the story in this time period?


Erskine: There were a couple reasons, although for one it was as soon as we were in middle school so it felt suitable to begin there if we're mining from our own experiences. And then I think the other reason was it was a time with rarely any cell phones. If anything, maybe one kid had one, and thus as soon as you're telling these stories, it's nice to not have the social media aspect piece of it or cell phones or technology. We wanted it to feel like each person was dropped into a memory of that time and that was really essential to us.


Konkle: This is gonna sound like a convoluted story, although Whenever I was little in Boston, somehow, I would audition for commercials. I did that for maybe ten years and — by the way, never got one however kept going and was like, "It'll happen today" — and I remember the casting director was so nice. She lived in my town in Scituate, Massachusetts and Once I turned 13, I stopped getting auditions and I was like, "Laura, why? I'm not really going in anymore and how is that and what is it about me," and whichever, and she's like, "Oh, no. It's age." That's the age that corporations stop putting in their commercials because they desire to be able to kids or they aspire to be able to see well-adjusted teens. They don't hope to be able to see people going through puberty. It's a really awkward, weird time. And thus, I think for a very long time — mean, i'm assuming, however it felt that way — that media was sort of skipping this weird, "ugly" time, so it sort of was a mine for it.


MTV News: So several shows will cast older teens to play young teens or they'll cast 20-year-olds to play older teens or whichever it is. So was that why you wanted to cast young teens in this show?


Konkle: Yeah, really the most authentic as we could.


Erskine: I think they're all 12 and 13 at the time — most of them.


Konkle: It was really hard, although we got really lucky. Casting took a long time. We had trouble finding kids that felt like someone in a memory. You know, someone that you're not seeing on TV, someone that you sat next to in school … And we spoke a lot about like, ‘What is the typical pop person like on TV?’ And attempting to go away from that. Because that's the instinct towards what you visualize a lot, and really continuing to remind each other of what the real person was like in that school.


MTV News: It's like you didn't want social media in the show along with and you also didn't want that social media shine.


Konkle: Yeah, and I do not actually know how we would write it, honestly. As the reality is we don't know what it's like to be in middle school right now, with social media. And I think we're routinely attempting to tell an authentic story and that's what we knew. So I guess that's sort of the cliché thing, write what you know. However yeah, I don't know where we would've begun if it was middle school now.


MTV News: What was it like working with teens? Did they give you any tricks on what their experiences are like right now?


Erskine: I mean, this is another tangent, however once we were filming one of the episodes, all of us were supposed to be dressed as Spice Females doing this routine and the popular women come over. I hadn't met the kid actors however who were playing them — I was filming and Anna had a break because she was teaching them the routine, nevertheless she was in her typical clothes, no braces on — and so they loved her. So then, whenever they came to meet me, I was in my bowl cut along with a mustache low-rider jeans and so they were like, "Hey…" And I felt instantly like I had to prove myself to them. I was like, "I wear high-waisted jeans. I've worn them for several years. I've worn them since high school, like you guys. Trust me, I'm f’ing cool." It's just even being around 13-year-olds, you revert.


Konkle: It's certainly the same. The element of computers, the way they interact right now and the phones and social media — I don't know what the consequences of that are, honestly. However one of the theories of the show was the idea that something hopefully would resonate, even in case you went back to medieval times in middle school, that hopefully there'd be a thread. There's something about that age, between a kid and teenager-dom that's like very eccentric. And I think we saw that with the kids on our show.


Erskine: Completely. It feels like, even my parents, who are from a different generation were like, "I felt that same way." It's a weird time where you just are transferring into an adult with your body however then your mind is still forming and still wanting to hold on to childhood.


MTV News: Yeah, you touch upon these universal themes of that age. At the same time, it’s set in a very specific generation. How did you guys balance those references with making sure that you were staying true to these in general themes?


Erskine: I think we began with, first, our own personalized stories, like seeing what we may mine from that and why that could become an arc during the season between my and Anna's characters and what story we might tell with that. And I think the references to the time period, we habitually didn't wanna put also much of an emphasis on it, we wanted it to just feel like it was segment of the background of it and not pointing it out as much.


Konkle: Not leaning on it … The joke isn't the nostalgia.


Erskine: Exactly. So I think, you know, it was so fun to have that be a piece of the world, although not use it for story.


Konkle: Not take advantage of it, kind of.


Erskine: Exactly. With the exception of AIM, objective is definitely… It's an ode to it. We do a whole episode on it, however other than that, I feel like that's not what sparked story ideas. It was just our experiences.


Konkle: Right. And AIM was such a massive segment of our vibe at that point that's just gone right now, that it's like, OK to go back there for a while.


Erskine: A time capsule.


Konkle: It's like, "I wanna go back there, I wanna get those little dings."


Erskine: It, like, made me horny just hearing those dings. That's what we mentioned all of the time, we're like, "I'm horny."


MTV News: OK so, on being horny — there's something very cool about seeing teenage women explore their sexuality on a TV show. There's typically so much shame surrounding things like masturbation. What was your objective with your portrayal?


Erskine: I think you just mentioned it flawlessly, although it was, you know, I am sharing a very personalized story because I, for so long, felt so ashamed and I still to this day struggle with it because I hadn't seen or heard anyone do it so I felt like I was a monster, like I was a pervert. There just was… no one spoken about it. And women either lied or didn't do it, and as soon as there was a rumor about a girl masturbating, it was, "Ew! That's disgusting!" And thus it just shut me up for so long. I think there's a couple objectives with it. Hopefully other women who are exploring in the same way won't feel alone.


Konkle: Best companions talking about it felt wrong — in the starting. You know, right now it's like we’re talking about it all of the time, however it's still like you're breaking through a feeling that we have for some reason that it feels wrong. And on the other side of things, like, I wasn't masturbating although there was a rumor that I masturbated and for about five years I was harassed that I was a slut. Like, hadn’t had my first kiss, although even the idea that I was masturbating was enough for me to be slut-shamed … It was very depressing and it also felt like such a key story to share and I was so grateful to Maya that she was ready to share it.


Erskine: I'm grateful also. Then the other side of it, to prepare it lighter, is just that in TV and film, you either visualize a woman masturbating as, like, bad or sexual. It's never funny. Or perhaps there really is an example, however we haven't seen it. So that was exhilarating to us also, of like, routinely in movies like American Pie, there's jokes made out of a guy having a boner and jerking off. Like where's the humor for the girl side of it? Like how do you show that on a girl?


Konkle: Because it's funny.


Erskine: It is funny! It's funny. It's gross. It's weird. It's real. So that was an exhilarating thing and risky and certainly so scary to perform with, like, literally a crew just standing and not aware what sort of show they were getting themselves into. However you know, here you go.


MTV News: It's piece of this rise of gross female comedy that's really exhilarating and interesting to be able to see. Like Broad City does it.


Konkle: You're right. Broad City does do it. We've been talking about this a lot — we began making things maybe six years prior or so and at the time you know, we hadn’t done very much, nevertheless we were able to get meetings and in those meetings each person was like, "Lena Dunham. Amy Poehler. Bridesmaids." There really are all these females that came before us that have paved the way for us have the ability to prepare something like that. Like we got to create what we wanted to create with Hulu because of them!


MTV News: And let's just end on what you hope people get out of this series.


Konkle: People that have made things where it sort of feels like they're sharing secrets has habitually made me feel much less alone, and I think that could be a wonderful result. We also have sort of a dark sense of humor and can laugh at things that maybe you don't typically laugh at. And for people to just appreciate and watch it.


Erskine: Just to adore it and hopefully not be also traumatized by remembering their own memories!


This interview has been edited and condensed.