![]() There were signs put up about me that said “slut” with my picture and shit like that. ![]() ![]() And I think that experience caused me to even vilify masturbating as a girl and woman more than I would’ve naturally, because I was so ostracized by my fellow girls about it. KONKLE: But it was also sexualizing me when I wasn’t ready. Good as in, I liked getting attention from the older guys. And the way that people perceived me going into high school, to be sexually somewhere I was not-I got a lot of attention for that, good and bad. KONKLE: So when it surfaced in this way in seventh grade, that was mortifying because not only was it not true, but I wasn’t there yet. But I never in my wildest dreams thought it was sexual or could be construed as something sexual because I was so not connected to that side of myself yet. And I was like, “I’ll do it,” which is really weird and who I was and am. And really, in fifth or fourth grade, I played Truth or Dare and dared someone to put an ice cube in their underpants. Actually, when I was in seventh grade, that’s when the “Icebox” rumor started, that I had masturbated with an ice cube. I mean, guys would joke about jerking off, but the idea that girls were masturbating never crossed my mind.ĮRSKINE: So you didn’t even know it was a possibility that you could get pleasure from yourself? KONKLE: I think it has to do with the community we moved to outside of Boston that was predominantly Catholic. MAYA ERSKINE: Okay, so going right for it-ĮRSKINE: How old were you when you first masturbated? And what did you think when you heard of girls doing it, when we were 13? During a recent stay at the Standard Hotel, the two shared a meal and chatted about middle school, the ups and downs of the popularity game, and-head-trip warning for everyone who thinks of the 34-year-olds as forever 13-what it’s like to become a mother. Sadly for the avid fans of PEN15, this likely means the show’s current season, now streaming on Hulu (called 2B), will likely be the last. Today, the pair have a steady stream of new projects on the horizon: among other things, Erskine will appear in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series on Disney Plus, and Konkle is completing a memoir. (That’s how they met Sam Zvibleman, a writer and director on PEN15 and the inspiration behind the show’s “Sam” character.) They also, unexpectedly, became mothers mere months apart, during a worldwide pandemic no less, earlier this year. Their bond endured the rest of their undergraduate years at NYU, a bicoastal stint when Konkle attempted to leave the entertainment world for good, and even their first creative collaboration-a Kickstarter-funded Web series called MANA-during which Konkle took up residence on Erskine’s couch. Konkle and Erskine first met in an experimental-theater workshop while studying abroad in Amsterdam, and have remained close friends ever since. Over two seasons of their cringe comedy PEN15, the pair conjure a vision of early aughts adolescence that feels, as Erskine has put it in the past, like an “interminable hell.” But somehow, it’s also cathartic and sweet and deeply, wonderfully, horribly, heartrendingly funny-enough so that it received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series earlier this year. Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle have earned a reputation for mining the collective trauma of middle school.
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