22 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER6, 2021
ONWARD ANDUPWARD WITHTHEA RTS
GROWING PAINS
The women behind the thirteen-year-olds of “PEN15.”
RACHEL SYME
PHOTOGRAPH BY ILONA SZWARC
I
t was a sizzling August morning in
2021, but inside a hair-and-makeup
trailer parked at the Pacific Palms Re-
sort, an hour east of Hollywood, Maya
Erskine and Anna Konkle were return-
ing to the year 2000. The women, who
are both thirty-four, are co-creators
and co-stars of “PEN15,” a Hulu series
in which they play versions of them-
selves as teen-agers, the thirteen-year-
old best friends and misfits Maya Ishii-
Peters and Anna Kone. In the makeup
trailer, Erskine sat in front of a vanity
mirror as a stylist wearing a face shield
used a felt-tip pen to paint hundreds
of tiny strokes onto her upper lip, cre-
ating the illusion of a faint mustache.
“I was made fun of for being hairy—I
had a deep insecurity about that,” Er-
skine told me. Beside her, a hair styl-
ist twisted strands of Konkle’s fine
blond hair around the neck of a tiny
curling iron, creating bouncy cork-
screws. The women then moved to an
adjacent costume trailer to complete
their “PEN15” looks: for Maya, a black
bowl-cut wig that resembles a giant
porcini mushroom, similar to Erskine’s
haircut in fifth grade; for Anna, a set
of protruding pop-in braces that mimic
the ones Konkle had to wear—twice.
(“My orthodontist made a mistake,”
she said.) The mouthpiece cuts into
Konkle’s gums and makes it nearly
impossible for her to eat or drink. It’s
painful, but so is being thirteen.
All other middle schoolers on “PEN15”
are played by adolescents: the popular
girls, the other outcasts, the unrequited
crushes. Erskine and Konkle don’t con-
vincingly pass among them, but that is
the point. Their junior-high burlesque
is a sight gag as well as the heart of the
series; more literally than most teen pa-
riahs, Maya and Anna have trouble fit-
ting in. The women were preparing to
shoot an episode from the show’s third
season in which their younger avatars
attend a popular girl’s bat-mitzvah party
at a country club. At about 11 A.M., they
entered a banquet hall inside the Pacific
Palms, where the party had been staged
in period-specific teenybopper style. A
camera crew was filming B-roll footage
of a d.j. playing the 1998 techno-pop
song “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” as a triad of
sequin-clad hype dancers did the Run-
ning Man on a laminate dance floor.
Teen-age extras and white-haired el-
ders in yarmulkes checked out a station
for making airbrushed T-shirts. The
women took their places, in a buffet line,
and the episode’s director, Dan Lon-
gino, called “Action.” Erskine, as Maya
(short, hyperactive, impish), jiggled her
body to the beat. Konkle, as Anna (tall,
laconic, slouched), stood behind her,
glowering, in the throes of a fatalistic
mood brought on, earlier in the episode,
by a lesson on the Holocaust.
“Oh, my God, this party is amazing,”
Erskine said.
“Who are these people, and why are
they here?” Konkle muttered.
“I dunno, it’s Becca’s bat mitzvah,”
Erskine replied.
“No, I mean, like, on Earth,” Kon-
kle said.
“Oh, my God. Dippin’ Dots! Dip-
pin’ Dots!” Erskine exclaimed suddenly,
eying a station offering ice-cream pel-
lets. Then she got the giggles and had
to stop. “Sorry, this is so bad,” she said.
She took a breath and regained her com-
posure. “Na, Dippin’ Dots! Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. O.K., I need that.” (To
each other, Maya and Anna are Mai
and Na.) Erskine turned to look at Kon-
kle, but then she broke again. Konkle,
staying in character, said, “What? I’m
glad you’re enjoying life.”
“PEN15” premièred in 2019 and be-
In their Hulu series, Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle relive seventh grade. came a cult hit. Erskine and Konkle made
