Maya Erskine

Hannah Einbinder, Maya Erskine, Charlotte Nicdao and Punam Patel talk about entertaining viewers — and themselves — during a difficult time

“It is so extreme. What’s a way to show that can be funny, but can also be heartbreaking? I love this age because it was such a turning point for me. I had so many traumatic moments. I was very ashamed of those things that I felt like I was the only one going through, yet I found that so many people can relate to it.”

Anna Konkle and Maya Erskine, the stars and creators of PEN15, were getting ready to join a Zoom call to discuss the second season of their series when something went wrong. Erskine, who, like Konkle, plays a middle-school version of herself on the Hulu dramedy, dropped her laptop, shattering the screen.

In January, best friends and Pen15 costars/producers/writers Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle had a delightful surprise for their followers. A few months after Erskine announced that she and the actor Michael Angarano, her fiancé, were expecting a baby, Konkle revealed that she too was pregnant with her fiancé, the writer and actor Alex Anfanger—and that she was already nine months along. Needless to say, a barrage of joyous headlines followed: “Maya Erskine And Anna Konkle From ‘PEN15’ Are Pregnant at the Same Time and It’s BFF Goals”; “BFFs Anna Konkle and Maya Erskine Pregnant With Future BFFs.” But what had long been kept a secret from the public was, within Erskine and Konkle’s innermost circle, already very old news.

While Maya Erskine might not be a household name (or at least, not yet), many people would recognize Erskine as Maya Ishii-Peters in the hit Hulu series PEN15 — a shy 13-year-old girl with a bowl cut, navigating the treachery of seventh grade with her best friend.