Benito Skinner may live in Los Angeles now, and when we meet via Zoom for our interview, he’s in Paris, but there were four years after college during which he lived in New York. It’s a place he remembers fondly: “I feel like New York really raised me, which sounds a little cliché, but it did,” he said. “That’s where I did my early stand-up. All my videos were pretty much me running around Bushwick and Williamsburg in wigs and feverishly editing in random coffee shops, just trying to make it.”

This is why attending the Tribeca Festival premiere of his newest film, First Time Female Director, which he called his “first big role in a movie,” is sort of like a homecoming. “[New York] just felt like the perfect place for a movie that means so much to me and that I’m so honored to be a part of. It was truly so special.”

First Time Female Director marks the directorial debut of actress and comedian Chelsea Peretti, whom you may know from the cast of Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Big Mouth, as well as her Netflix Comedy Special, Chelsea Peretti: One of the Greats. In addition to directing, Peretti also wrote the script and stars as Sam, a playwright who unexpectedly finds herself directing her own play for the first time at a local theater in Glendale, California. Though it’s a dream come true, she quickly discovers how difficult it is to pull off a rural Southern drama onstage, especially when her cast (played by Skinner, Kate Berlant, Megan Mullally, Meg Stalter, Jak Knight, and Blake Anderson) is a mixed bag of often-uncooperative personalities.

On Channeling His Inner Theater Kid
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“I got asked in one of the Q&As if I’m like Rudy, and I was like, I f***ing hope not,” said Skinner of his character in First Time Female Director, who is one of the more antagonistic actors in Sam’s cast, simultaneously taking the play and his role very seriously while also making it known, with a menacing stare or a sly comment, just how out of her depth Sam is as director. “What I wanted to do with Rudy was this feeling of it being the biggest deal in the world. Anytime you’re part of a group, it can start to feel like that’s the entire world. Chelsea does such a great job in the film of creating this bubble where the stakes are really high, and we’re treating them like they really are life-and-death in this.”

Coming of age in Idaho in the late-2000s and the turn of the 2010s, Skinner wasn’t a theater kid growing up, even though he wanted to be, but played high school football instead. (“I just thought the second I stepped onstage, everyone would know my big secret.” That is, him being gay.) As such, it wasn’t until he got to college that he started auditioning for plays, and it was there that he encountered different types of Rudy. “The role was really informed for me by a few theater kids that I have encountered, who may have been more intense, maybe slightly sinister, and kind of clique-y, very much not liking new people. I remember I auditioned for a play right when I got to college, and a Rudy definitely was not having my audition.”

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Of the many characters in First Time Female Director, aside from Sam, Rudy is arguably the only one whose backstory is more so brought to the fore. Abandoned by his mom when he was a kid, it’s clear that he projects a lot of his trauma on Sam, which, for a film that aims to be a comedy, gave Skinner a lot to play with and discuss with Peretti. Indeed, there’s a scene early on where Rudy and Sam meet for a one-on-one at a diner, and it’s there that he makes known how he feels about her. For Skinner, this scene was shot on the second day of production, which might have initially been daunting, but turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

“It was this really big scene that defines the character for the rest of the movie, and I had just met Chelsea, and Amy [Poehler, who’s co-producing] was on-set that day, so it was terrifying,” said Skinner. Of course, his fear “immediately melted away” once he and Peretti dove into and performed the scene. “We talked about the script, and I think there is a certain level of resentment that he has towards women because of his traumatic past. I feel like that darkness was definitely a part of all his interactions with Sam, but when he’s with the theater dolls, he’s very much a brighter, more comedic character. That’s what was so fun about the script to me, that he did have this intensity.”

On Benny Drama and Beyond

Skinner rose to fame creating videos as Benny Drama, his online comedic persona, known for over-the-top characters like Deliverance Richards and Kooper the Gen Z White House Intern, as well as impressions of celebrities like Shawn Mendes and Kourtney Kardashian. Though he initially began uploading content on social media in his final year of college, it wasn’t until 2020 that his videos really went viral, so much so that British Vogue called him “the only funny thing to happen” that year. But if you ask him if this internet-to-Hollywood pipeline was his master plan from the start, he’ll assure you that it wasn’t.

“I was just posting videos because it made me happy. It felt like such an insane dream that I would ever be able to do what, fortunately, I’m doing now,” said Skinner. “That’s what’s really exciting about social media to me. I feel like the iron gates of Hollywood that have maybe scared a lot of people away or made people who didn’t grow up in L.A. or New York think there was no they could [succeed] — so many people now come from social media and have been able to get into TV and film.”

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Skinner currently has 1.4 million followers on Instagram and TikTok, but while he’s largely recognizable as his internet persona, he personally has always “felt more like an actor or comedian than a personality.” Skinner, in fact, revealed that he even had a conversation with Peretti about “being from the internet” and whether that was any sort of deterrent. “She was like, ‘Well, you’ve done these videos, so I’ve seen you act.’ It’s just a testament to how she is; she cares about things being funny.”

Up next on the small screen for Skinner is Overcompensating, a TV series he wrote and is set to star in that is being produced by A24 and will release on Prime Video (via Hollywood Reporter). In keeping with the theme of First Time Female Director, when asked if he saw himself one day in the director’s chair, he said, “Yes, for sure, but I think I also have unfinished business with acting and writing that I will want to do first.”

Roku acquired the U.S. rights to First Time Female Director, which will be available exclusively to stream on The Roku Channel in 2024.