PEN15 Forever: Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle on the Show’s TikTok Revival

“I need U to watch this show pen15,” I texted my friend Wylie a few years ago, during our sophomore year of college. We had met in pre-K after a teacher set us up on a blind date on the playground. After eyeing each other up and down, we hopped on a red plastic seesaw. We’ve been best friends ever since. “It’s literally us.”

If you haven’t seen it, Pen15 is a comedy series about middle school created by real-life best friends Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle. Both in their 30s, they played seventh-grade misfits in the year 2000, surrounded by a cast of actual 13-year-olds; no one acknowledged they were fully-fledged adults. Every time I rewatch an episode, I miss Wylie, who’s a variant of Anna Kone (played by Konkle): constantly pulling at her hair, earnest in her love, drawn to romance in an overgrown- Disney-princess way. In the show, Anna has eyes only for Maya Ishii-Peters (played by Erskine), who, like me, is intense, experimental, and boyish—an impossible mix of supremely confident and cripplingly insecure.

Pen15 premiered on Hulu in 2019, earning four Emmy nominations across its two seasons. Since then, Erskine has gone on to give an Emmy-nominated performance in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, while Konkle wrote a best-selling memoir, The Sane One. Recently, Pen15 has had a Gen Z renaissance thanks to TikTok. The app is full of clips and compilations of the show’s best moments, such as Maya telling her middle school class, “If the Nazis showed up at my house and said you have one hour to pack your favorite things, I would bring…this Chanel shopping bag.” Or Anna outside the school bathroom telling Maya, “You are my actual ­ rainbow gel pen in a sea of blue and black writing utensils.” On TikTok, the most popular fan edits have racked up 30 million views and counting. “One day, I went on TikTok and saw ‘Maya sadcore’ and ‘Anna sadcore’— trailers cut together of all these moments where we are having a hard time in Pen15,” Konkle tells me. “I was crying by the end.”

Erskine, the daughter of drummer Peter Erskine, grew up in Los Angeles, while Konkle was raised in Vermont and Massachusetts. They met in ­ college at New York University, during an experimental theater program in Amsterdam one summer. After graduating, both Konkle and Erskine ­ eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue careers in entertainment. Frustrating rounds of auditions led to only a smattering of TV and film roles, so the duo started a web series called “Project Reality,” which landed them an agent. After that, they wrote the Pen15 pilot with another friend, Sam Zvibleman. “When we were 13, we wanted to watch shows about impossibly pretty girls we’d never look like,” says Erskine. “By making ourselves the rejects, we thought, No one’s going to identify with this. That the audience says, ‘I feel this, I am this’—that’s the ultimate thing that could have happened.”

Although it’s set in the 2000s, the show captures a timeless mood. It magnifies the awkward space between childhood and adolescence, and nails the queasy dissonance between what you think you’re supposed to feel versus what you actually feel. Take developing your first crush: “In my mind, I was like, ‘Now I’m a pervert,’ because I was feeling sexual things,” says Erskine. “I felt like I was turning into a monster or a werewolf.” In the show, Anna describes her first kiss as a “torpedo cat tongue drilled my mouth.” It ends with her in tears. “At least you had your first kiss,” Maya assures her at a sleepover. “I wish that I hadn’t,” says Anna.

This awkward internal transformation is what drives “THAT episode,” as TikTok commenters lovingly refer to the moment Maya discovers masturbation. The urge consumes Maya, as her guilt turns into paranoia that her late grandfather is watching. “Boys masturbating has been a joke in middle school since we were 13,” says Konkle. “Why does it feel wrong for us to make that funny for girls?” Maybe the hyperrealism of Pen15 is resonating with Gen Z because it goes against the manicured curation we usually find on TikTok and Instagram. “Wanting to do something a touch singular meant there were countless times we’d doubt a pitch,” says Konkle. “Naturally, one of us would be there to defend the idea from the other.”

Just as Erskine and Konkle finished reenacting the grueling popularity contest that is seventh grade, they got famous and were plunged into the adult version of it. When “Pen15 first came out, we didn’t expect anything,” says Konkle. After it was nominated for an Emmy, “I was scared—scared of rejection, scared of all of it. It’s a whole new experience of popularity.” What “feels cool is finally having enough space from making it to say, ‘Wow, we did that,’ ” says Erskine.

In the last episode of the series, Anna and Maya fantasize about their future together: a double wedding, a divorce at the same time (“because [husbands] got in the way of us”), and a joint property with magical clouds low and fluffy enough to hang out in. “It did feel like a love letter to our friendship and also a grieving for a kid’s point of view, for the aspiration of being best friends forever,” says Konkle. “We’ve both had busy lives since the show, but, spiritually, we are always there.” Erskine cuts in: “I literally hate that we’re not neighbors, though.” When I ask if there’s anything they miss about seventh grade—after living through it twice— Erskine says, “The unabashed love that you can show for your best friend in public.”

In genuine need of advice, I ask how to maintain a best friendship while growing up. Erskine starts to answer, then stops herself. “I’ll cry,” she says. “Your friend has to show up in the hard times and the celebratory times,” she explains, voice cracking. “I don’t know what the advice is, but I just know that we’ve done that for each other.” Konkle adds: “Close, long-term friendships go through seasons. Have faith in that seed of a friendship. Keep showing up.” Erskine reminds her: “I’m always living next to you on a cloud.”

Hair by Amber Duarte for Bumble and Bumble at Hype Creative; makeup by Ciara Maccaro for Merit Beauty at Day One Agency; manicure by Emi Kudo for Dazzle Dry at A-Frame Agency. Extras casting by Rachel Chandler at Art Partner. Set design by Carter McNeill.

Produced By Rosco Production; Executive Producer: Kaitlyn Fong; Senior Producer: Hannah Murphy; Production Manager: Alison Yardley; Photo Assistant: Carolin Schild; Stylist’s Assistants: Karen Gonzales, Niki Ravari; Makeup Assistant: Arielle Park; Manicurist’s Assistant: Pilar Noire; Set Assistants: Bawb Mason, Hannah Roy; Production Assistants: Laphale Black, Cooper Campisi, Ruby Zatz; Extras: Corey Balkissoon At Margaux The Agency, Zoe Banoza At Vision Los Angeles, Ahmad Hagan At His Laboratory, Alexandria Ostby At Margaux The Agency, Ruby Schur At Photogenics, Berkeley Sloan At Vision Los Angeles, Benson Webster At State Management.