Maya Erskine has spent a lot of time questioning her impulse to act and to have all eyes on her, after a childhood in which she desperately wanted to blend in – or even disappear altogether. “In therapy I’ve talked a lot about why I’m someone who’s drawn to that,” she says. “It can seem like it’s about, ‘Look at me! Like me! Approve of me!’, but I think it’s really about finding your people. It’s about connections, especially when you grow up feeling different and like you don’t have a community. Through art, you’re able to find that community, which is a wonderful thing.”
Erskine’s PEN15, a deliciously uncomfortable autobiographical comedy about the agonies of teenage life, certainly succeeded in creating a community around its star, despite a questionable premise: Erskine, then 31, played her 13-year-old self struggling with puberty, boys and her Japanese-American parentage opposite a cast of actual teenagers. The show was lavished with critical acclaim and generated a passionate cult following: “It was such a big and lovely surprise to have these people reach out and say: ‘That exact thing happened to me.’ So it wasn’t just about me making them feel better. It made me feel better, too.”
