24 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER6, 2021
New York, where she worked as a server
at Prune, the acclaimed Manhattan
restaurant, and Erskine eventually moved
back to L.A., signing with a small tal-
ent agency. She was landing auditions
only every three months or so, she said,
adding, “And it was for, like, Chinese
Waitress No. 2.”
By late 2012, Konkle was thinking
about applying to graduate school in art
therapy. On a whim, she took
a small role in a friend’s Web
series and then called Er-
skine, convincing her that
the time to make something
together was now or never.
Then she drove to L.A. and
crashed on Erskine’s couch
while they wrote, filmed, and
starred in a Web series of
their own. The project, which
they funded through Kick-
starter, was a reality-TV spoof called
“MANA.” Few people saw it, but it resulted
in three life-changing developments: the
pair landed representation with the top
comedy talent agency Gersh, Konkle
moved to L.A. permanently, and they
found a third collaborator in Zvibleman,
who had studied filmmaking at U.S.C.
and did set work on the Web series.
Around then, another pair of best
friends, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer,
débuted their stoner comedy “Broad City,”
on Comedy Central, and it became a run-
away success. Suddenly, TV executives
were looking for the next big female duo.
Konkle and Erskine landed several “gen-
eral meetings,” an industry term for open-
ended pitch sessions. One of the ideas
they batted around was a sitcom called
“Fosters,” in which they’d play former
cult members hiding out by posing as
teen-agers in a foster family. (“This was
before ‘Kimmy Schmidt’ came out,” Er-
skine said, referring to the Netflix com-
edy that also follows a cult escapee.) In
order to generate plotlines for the show,
they would sit with Zvibleman and re-
count tales from their own adolescence.
“Maya talked about hiding her period
for a year, and Anna talked about shav-
ing her legs,” he recalled. “It was a mile
a minute, and their connection is so in-
tense. I said, ‘These stories are beyond
fascinating to me.’” At N.Y.U., Erskine
and Konkle had studied the Grotowski
method, which Konkle described as “the
idea that physicality can inform feelings
and the brain.” At some point, Erskine
told me, Zvibleman said, “ ‘Forget pre-
tending to be kids. Just be thirteen.’ ”K
onkle’s most vivid experience of
being thirteen was witnessing the
dissolution of her parents’ marriage. Her
mother and father had fought bitterly
throughout her childhood. In 2000, they
announced that they would divorce, but
the negotiations took three
years in court. During that
time, Peter, Konkle’s father,
refused to move out of the
family home. The house was
divided into two hostile ter-
ritories, with Konkle often
playing peacemaker. Her
mother, Janet Ryan, a re-
tired nurse with a hippie-
ish vibe, recalled that her
daughter seemed mature
beyond her years. One winter, the fam-
ily cat killed Konkle’s beloved hamster,
Chucky. “I collapsed on the carpet sob-
bing,” Ryan said. “And then Anna comes
down the stairs and comforts me. She
said, ‘It’s O.K., Mommy.’” Konkle told
me, “I was so angry with my parents.
My mom would be, like, ‘But for you
wasn’t it nice having the family together?’
And I’m, like, ‘Um, no, are you insane?’”
After years of estrangement, Konkle re-
connected with her father when he was
given a diagnosis of lung cancer, in 2019.
She became his caretaker during the
final months of his life.
Anna’s parents’ divorce is in “PEN15,”
at the end of Season 1, but the process
is nowhere near as long or as acrimo-
nious as the one Konkle experienced.
For the scene in which Anna’s parents
break the news that they’re splitting up,
though, Konkle adhered to the details
as she recalled them. She was sitting
cross-legged on the bedroom floor, fold-
ing clothes. Her parents rapped gently
on the door. They delivered the news
gingerly while her mom, named Kathy
in the show and played by Melora Wal-
ters, fidgeted with the rings on her fin-
gers. “‘My parents told me they are get-
ting a divorce’ is a trope, or it can sound
blunt and obvious,” Konkle said. “I
wanted to show exactly what it felt like,
looked like, from my P.O.V.”
Konkle’s avatar rebels against her
parents, smoking cigarettes and getting
drunk and stealing another girl’s pinkthong, which Anna and Maya take turns
wearing to school. Konkle merely spent
as much time as possible away from
home, often at the house of her best
friend, Courtney. On “PEN15,” just be-
fore Anna’s parents announce their di-
vorce, she spends two nights at the
Ishii-Peterses’. At first, the girls run
through the house stuffed into the same
giant T-shirt, and chant, “We. Are. Sis-
ters.” But Maya soon grows weary of
sharing her family and starts acting out.
In one scene, Maya’s mother, Yuki, ten-
derly combs Anna’s hair in the living
room, ignoring her daughter’s petulance.
The part of Yuki is played by Er-
skine’s mother, Mutsuko, whom I met
one morning this past summer at the
family home, a nineteen-thirties bun-
galow on a sleepy side street in Santa
Monica. When I entered, Peter, Maya’s
father, who is a dead ringer for Rob
Reiner, invited me to remove my shoes.
On a shelf in the family room sat bob-
blehead dolls of Erskine and Konkle—a
gift from Erskine’s half brother, Taichi,
who is an editor on “PEN15.” Mutsuko,
who goes by Mutsy, had never acted
before appearing on the show. Origi-
nally from the Tokyo suburbs, she first
met Peter, a drummer in the renowned
jazz-fusion band Weather Report, while
working as a translator for American
artists touring Japan. Mutsy later mar-
ried another man and had Taichi. When
that relationship ended, she moved with
Taichi to the U.S., and they settled with
Peter in California just before Erskine
was born.
As a mixed-race, middle-class fam-
ily, the Erskines stood out in Santa Mon-
ica. From kindergarten through ninth
grade, Erskine attended Crossroads, an
élite private school known for educat-
ing the children of the rich and famous.
She did not quite qualify for a need-
based scholarship, and Peter often toured
a hundred and eighty days a year in
order to afford the tuition. By seventh
grade, Erskine told me, she was no lon-
ger close with her elementary-school
friends: “I realized I’m not as rich as
them. I would beg my mom, ‘I need a
Kate Spade bag.’” In the bat-mitzvah
episode of “PEN15,” Maya pleads with
her parents to buy a Swarovski neck-
lace as a gift for Becca. The same thing
happened in real life, except the neck-
lace was from Tiffany. “My mom was,