Why Hollywood Won‘t Let Teens Play Teens

When are you too old to play a young person? For as long as Hollywood writes and casts for teens on screen, it’s been mostly allergic to using actual teenagers.

Case in point: Prime Video’s Overcompensating, a college-set comedy written and starring TikTok star Benito Skinner. While the actual show is about the awkward highs and lows of your freshman year of college, when most people are 18 to 19 years old, the majority of the show’s stars have definitely been off their parents‘ medical insurance for years.

Skinner and his co-star Mary Beth Barone, who, at 33, plays Skinner’s older sister, a character in her junior year, addressed the talk on an episode of their podcast. A friend, she said, read a comment saying the actors looked too old for their roles. In response, another commenter wrote, “You know, the zombies in The Last of Us aren't real, right?”

“You can watch zombies, but you can't watch people in their 30s play college kids?” Barone said. ”I don't know—figure your shit out.”

Skinner quickly followed up, saying: “And I can't stress enough: If you can‘t suspend disbelief, go watch the Housewives or something. Like, there‘s so much on TV.”

To be fair, Overcompensating is hardly the first show to overdo it. Hollywood has always preferred its high schoolers fully grown. Grease gave us a 33-year-old Stockard Channing playing a teen. The cast of the original Beverly Hills 90210 looked like they had kids in high school. And let us never forget Glee, in which Cory Monteith was 27 playing a high schooler. This has happened on Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, and The O.C. as well. Even in popular modern teen dramas like Euphoria, the student body looks like it’s fresh off a Calvin Klein shoot and years removed from their first kiss (we’re looking at you, Alexa Demie).

It goes without saying that these casting decisions owe in large part to labor laws, which dictate the hours someone under the age of majority can work and require schooling on set. Still, given the persistent conversations around the subject, we got on the phone with self-proclaimed “pop culture junkie” Laurence Maslon, a professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts who has written over 15 books about Broadway and pop culture, to get a better understanding of why Hollywood won’t let teens play teens.

“It‘s Hollywood, and there‘s a certain forgiveness.”

Laurence Maslon

This whole article idea came about because I was seeing a lot of conversations with people who were annoyed or upset that 30-year-olds are playing college students. What do you say to people like that, to the audience that simply just doesn't get it, or they don‘t like it?

Did you like the story? Or did you not like the story? If you‘re compelled by the performance and it‘s persuasive, then you don't notice those things.

So what were the big TV shows when you were coming up where it was mostly like adults playing teens?

A big show when I was growing up, very popular Off Broadway musical, was You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

So, 1965, the Charlie Brown Christmas animated special is obviously a huge phenomenon. But they had kids. They had kids recording the voices of Charlie Brown and his friends. But the musical had adults. [It] had people in their 20s. Gary Burghoff, who was on M*A*S*H for many years, played Charlie Brown. And that was kind of weird as a kid—like, why are there adults playing Charlie Brown and Lucy and Linus and all that? And the short answer is, because they are capable of handling the material in a way that real kids couldn‘t live onstage.

We‘ve all seen movies like Grease, where Stockard Channing, who plays [Betty] Rizzo, is supposed to be 16. She's actually 32 at the time.

It's Hollywood, and there's a certain forgiveness.

I think [about] Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand playing kids in college in The Way We Were when they were in their 30s and early 40s. And we just buy it, because they're stars.

Are there other factors that contribute to this?

I think there's a star thing, but I think at the end of the day, it really is probably legal, right? Kids have to go to school; if you're 14 or 15, you would need a tutor. I think it's required by law on a movie set. And if you're going to get a whole bunch of kids, that's expensive and extremely difficult to maintain. And maybe kids who are 13 and 14, like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, can be talented enough, but sometimes they just need somebody with more emotional experience to do those scripts.

The legal thing is interesting because I'm thinking back to things like Camp Rock, where I think it was all teenagers, and I remember watching the behind-the-scenes clips, and they all had to have tutors. They still had to have school in between shooting.

Right.

And so I guess this leads me to my next question. Like you said, for some of the material, you need to be sort of sophisticated. In your opinion, when does it absolutely make sense to have teens actually play teens or college-age people play college-age people? What are some scenarios that you can think of where it absolutely made sense to have the actual thing there?

It would sort of depend on the script, wouldn't it? In Happy Days, which was a huge show when I was growing up, those high school kids were in their 30s. Henry Winkler is Fonzie. There's no way any reasonable individual would think he was actually a high school student. But that's not what that show was about. That show was about comedy and character and stuff like that.

I suppose if there was something more realistic, like a serious coming-of-age story, it's not as interesting to see somebody who's already come of age sort of go through that. So I would say certainly, in the more serious stuff, you would want somebody who was age-appropriate.

“Certainly, in the more serious stuff, you would want somebody who was age-appropriate.”

Laurence Maslon

Do you think it‘s harmful in any way for Hollywood to consistently have adults in these roles? I’m thinking of things like not seeing people with acne on screen, or seeing full-grown adults whose bodies have already developed or are wildly different from the average teen’s body.

It’s not a documentary, you know? People watch something fictional and they know it's fictional. Whether it's Claire Danes or Zendaya or whoever, if they are compelling, I don't think that's problematic. It's not meant to be a public service announcement. It's meant to be a work of fiction. Fame was another movie where I think the directors went out of their way to get age-appropriate actors. But at the end of the day, if they're not good actors and they're not carrying the story, I don't think body type is really an issue.

Do you think if people are upset about it, then maybe it's a skill issue? Maybe the actors didn't convey the story enough?

It's a subjective thing, but I think some people being too literal-minded. It's a work of fiction. If it's the JonBenét Ramsey story, and you're making a documentary, and you hire Claire Danes to play Ramsey—that's ridiculous, right? We know that's not true. But I think people who get kind of upset about that kind of thing in something that's fictional, they should maybe get over themselves a little bit.

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