Benito Skinner, Soon-to-be Movie Star
When he logs onto Zoom, Benito Skinner has just stepped away from the world of Instagram sex bot comments.
“I just showed it to my boyfriend,” Skinner says of his video, in which he embodies the often-racy bot comments peppering Instagram these days. “He was like, ‘This is so strange.’ But he was giggling, so that’s good.”
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Sure enough, when he posts it on Instagram a few days later, it quickly hits with his followers (the account of the “Today” show dropped a comment that just read “literally”). Such is Skinner’s power: Over the past few years he has managed to identify tropes that we didn’t know we’d been aware of until he impersonated them (the hairdresser Jenni who tells you too much about her personal life and acts like you’re besties; the “demon twink,” as he calls him, who is mean to his boyfriend’s mom).
As a bona fide social media maven, Skinner is now taking his impersonation skills in a new direction: Acting. Skinner was part of the cast of the “Queer as Folk” reboot, and his film debut was supposed to be in Billy Eichner’s upcoming movie “Bros,” but unfortunately his scenes didn’t make the final cut. Fans will therefore have to wait until next year when he will be seen in “First Time Female Director,” from Chelsea Peretti.
“It’s definitely a theater troupe, and I get to have my theater kid moment that I definitely wanted as a kid, but I unfortunately played football instead to remain in the closet,” Skinner says of his character in Peretti’s movie. “It’s so ensemble-based and everyone is so amazing in it, and there’s this theater troupe. I think people are going to really love this movie. I mean, Chelsea’s a genius and it was an honor to play…I think you might get some of that same demon twink theater gay energy.”
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Skinner grew up in Idaho, where he says that telling someone you wanted to be an actor would’ve been “an interesting move.” He loved performing from an early age and learning to read people’s mannerisms.
“It sounds so cliché to say, ‘I’m so interested in what it’s like to be you.’ But I do think it’s just so fun to be able to transform in a lot of ways,” Skinner says. “I think I’ve always been in love with character actors, and I’ve been able to explore and test so many things on the internet that it feels great to now go into an even more collaborative space, where someone has written it and I didn’t have anything to do with the writing of it. I’m not doing the makeup. I’m not doing the costumes. That to me is so exciting because I feel like it’s freed up so much space as far as creativity, too, that I can come onto a set and not have to do all that and set up my green screen. And I know that I won’t edit it, which is the greatest gift of all.”
In addition to his other projects, Skinner is developing a variety show special, and has also long been at work on developing his own pilot, which he hopes will see the light of day soon.
“I’ve been loving acting. I’m so excited for ‘First Time Female Director’ to come out, and the response to ‘Queer as Folk’ has been really amazing,” he says. “I’m glad people love the absolute demon I am in that as well. Do you see the pattern here? Maybe I should be, like, a sweet person in something. I would love to play a nice boy in something. Luckily I’m writing that for myself, so maybe that’ll be the only time I’m allowed to do it.”
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