Her Throbbing Labia | Hormones Gone Rogue in "PEN15"

This one is so real it hurts.

Ariel and Morgan dive into PEN15 (Season 1, Episode 3: “Ojichan”). From the very first moment of “wait… what is happening to my body?” to the full spiral of can’t-stop-won’t-stop self-discovery, this episode captures the chaos, confusion, and intensity of discovering desire with absolutely no roadmap.

They get into it all:

•  The painfully accurate portrayal of first arousal: awkward, obsessive, and completely all-consuming 
•  Why casting adult actors as teens might allow the show to explore this safely without crossing ethical lines
•  The way PEN15 captures the feeling of “I must be the only one experiencing this” 
•  How shame, secrecy, and silence around sex education shape those early experiences 

It’s cringey. It’s deeply familiar. And it turns one of the most private human experiences into comedy gold.

Want to watch along? Our reaction covers Maya's first discovery (00:00:41), the Closet/Walkman scene (00:09:22), and the Classroom montage (00:04:14) We cut around the clips, so it won’t sync perfectly, but you’ll absolutely get the point. 

👉 Before you say anything - yes, Ariel mispronounced Maya Erskine’s last name. We know. We’re sorry. We love her.

-----------------------------------------

CREDITS — PEN15 (S1E3 “Ojichan”)
Creators: Maya Erskine; Anna Konkle; Sam Zvibleman
Director: Daniel Gray Longino
Writers: Maya Erskine; Anna Konkle; Sam Zvibleman
Producers: Maya Erskine; Anna Konkle; Sam Zvibleman
Actors (featured in discussed scenes): Maya Erskine; Anna Konkle
© 2019 Hulu / Lonely Island Classics, Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment,
AwesomenessTV. All rights reserved.

-----------------------------------------

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Anything that reminds you of anything that reminds you of sex in any capacity.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hold on to your throbbing labia.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Hi, I'm Ariel Lee Cohen. Hey, I'm Morgan Smith. And we are the hosts of Faking It with Ariel and Morgan.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

We're two intimacy coordinators here to talk about the spicy scenes you see in film and TV.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Hell yeah. Hell yes. Wait, can I show you something real quick? Yes. Oh, it's beautiful. It's my ring.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Yay!

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Oh, I'm so happy for you, girl.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Thank you. It came today. We didn't do engagement rings, so we did wedding rings, but then I we were both like, I don't want to wait till the wedding to wear the rings. So we're so then we got in the mail today, and Kim took it out of the package, and then she got down on one knee and put it on my hands. And she was like, say yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Oh my god. Adorable.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Adorable. It's nice. It's nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Which brings us to what was your first celebrity that you were sexually attracted to on screen.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

I can't remember if Tatiana Ali or JTT came first, to be honest.

unknown 1:31

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

And this was older Tatiana Ali, like when she was a teenager and was singing. But yeah, yeah, those were those were my two early ones. I didn't realize that Tatiana Lee was a crush. I thought I just really wanted to be her. And now looking back after I was out, I was like, that was a crush.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

I had a really interesting experience as a kid because I was watching Rocky Horror, and we got to the floor show, and there was a moment where magenta's breast and nipple and areola kind of pop out of the boustier just a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

This is a person doing magenta at screening or in the movie. Oh, I don't remember this part. Whoa.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

It happens. There's a split second. And around the fifth or sixth time that I rewound the tape, you were like, I was like, hmm, why am I fascinated by this? I realized that I may have some level of attraction to women. And then I came out as bisexual when I was like 13 to my friends. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

I didn't realize you were that young.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I thought I was a lesbian first. I was like, I'm into women only. And I came out to my mom and she was like, nah. I was like, all right, cool. But that's an unpack for another JSW. Yeah. But uh, yeah, it was only later that I realized I was also interested in men.

SPEAKER_00 3:06

You're attracted to grown-ass men.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

I was attracted to grown-ass people, totally in general.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Yeah. Yeah. I had an experience when I was maybe 14, where I kissed a girl on a dare and I didn't like it. So I thought I didn't like girls.

unknown 3:28

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Because I was open to the possibility. I didn't have any feelings like, oh, maybe this is something stirring inside me. It was just like, who knows? I'm still young. She was just a bad kisser. That happens, man. But I didn't realize that. I mean, I didn't come out until I was 28. So it took me a while to understand. Because I was like, well, I tried it and I didn't like it. And it was like, no, it's just that person.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Sexuality is a spectrum, baby. Truly is. You know, I saw this amazing video on Instagram. That's right. I'm the old Instagram video like yesterday, where it had a picture of someone drew like the line from straight to lesbian. And they're like, you'd think it's this, but then it's like, you know, it was a circle where it said at the top, you know, straight, and then slightly down the circles, like bye, queer, pan, all these different things. And the journey just bounced around the circle like a star. And then eventually landed at lesbian. It's like, that's the journey, man. It's like you're constantly questioning your own life and what and your place in it and your labels if you choose to label. And it's so let's all just be be cool, man, about wherever we're at in our journey. It turned into a soapbox. I don't know how that happened. Let's all just be cool. Let's all just be cool. And that's the t-shirt, the first t-shirt we'll have for faking it. Today we are watching an episode of Pen 15. Woo! We are covering a scene from season one, episode three of Pen 15 called OG John. It's from 2019. I feel like this is like our fourth project from 2019. Apparently, 2019 was like a hella good year for intimacy.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Banner year for intimacy. Right before so many of us could experience zero intimacy.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Ironic that way, isn't it? Generally speaking, have you seen this show? Do you know this show?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Yes. I watched it when it first came out. I haven't done a rewatch, so this is gonna feel fairly fresh to me. But I love it so much. I truly feel like I both looked similar to and behaved much like Anna. She feels like baby Morgan in a lot of ways, except I was much hornier.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

I've watched this show a couple of times and I'm obsessed with it, particularly season two, when they do the musical and there's a lot of drama because I was a musical theater kid and I felt very strongly about that. And uh I also did have a tall friend named Anna shout out Anna Fines, greatest person ever. She and I were a lot like these two characters in many ways, so that was pretty fun. Yay, I love that. As far as this episode, I do have to say I had a really hard time picking which ones because this episode is jam-packed with intimacy. There are 10 intimacy scenes in this episode alone. Oh my god. For those who have not seen the show, just as a general context, we have 30-year-olds who are playing sort of versions of their 13-year-old selves alongside actual 13-year-old actors. So starting off, we're gonna go uh time code 41 seconds in. So right off the bat. Amazing context. 13-year-old Maya, played by 30-year-old Maya, is playing with dolls when she finds herself turned on for presumably the first time. As far as credits, actors and characters in the scenes we're gonna watch are Maya Erskine as Maya Ishii Peters, and Anna Conkle as Anna Cone. It was written by Maya Erskine, produced by Maya Erskine, Anna Conkel, and Sam Tsviblemma, directed by Daniel Day Daniel Gray Daniel Day Lewis, directed by Daniel Day Longino.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Why is that every time anyone is named Daniel and I'm doing credits, I say their name is Daniel Day Lewis.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Okay, his name is Daniel Gray, so that's close enough.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

It's so close. Alright, but for real, it is directed by Daniel Gray Longino and intimacy coordinated by no one, even though intimacy coordinators did exist at the time, but they were fairly new, so it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Oh, the dolls are my little ponies. Yes, the dolls are. Alright, so Maya has a pink horse and a purple horse kissing. She's making little kissy sounds for them. Her heart is beating. Or oh, she feels maybe it's not her heart beating. It's her labia. We see them beating in the underwear, which is amazing. We see her moving her hands towards her pelvis, which is out of frame. She's found something she likes. And now from behind, we see her moving both of her hands at the same time. Aggressive, aggressively at her pelvis. She's picking up speed, she's closing her eyes, and she might have had her first orgasm and is now looking at her fingers, which has a sticky substance on it. She better sleep now.

unknown 8:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:00

The pulsating Lavia makes me so happy. The first time I watched it, I was in love.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

It is the cringiest show I've ever seen in the best possible way. But this moment was just pure gold. Like, I don't, I could not find what they put in her underwear specifically to do this heartbeating thing. It looks spectacular. And then also the moisture on the fingers. Chef's kiss, fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Her facial expressions are pretty reserved as far as like faces and self-stimulation scenes go. If I remember correctly, her character is a little bit more stoic in the face in general. I really, really love the choice to have her in very youthful underwear and a t-shirt. I like that we're not trying to sexualize it.

SPEAKER_01 9:57

Amazing that it's the My Little Pony that gets her interested in this. Because it's just realistic. The authenticity. This is a perfect example because we've gone over a lot of comedies at this point. And a lot of the time we forgive inauthenticity for the sake of the joke. And I feel like in this situation, it plays into the joke. It is perfectly authentic, minus the literal throbbing of the underwear. The moisture of the fingers play into it. Her expression plays into it. And although I do want to talk when we get to Spice Gale about two arms, I have a lot of thoughts about two arms.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah. Especially with the motion that they're both doing.

SPEAKER_01 10:42

Mm-hmm. Next context. After trying and failing and trying and failing to orgasm for masturbation several times that day, Maya puts aside her friendship responsibilities to masturbate at home, alone, while her best friend Anna deals with familial troubles. So we're gonna start at 922. This is a rather long scene, and we're gonna go to 1254. So hold on to your butts. Or labia. Or your labia, as it were.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

Hold on to your throbbing labia.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

There's a teaser for you.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Oh, now Anna's in her room listening to her parents fight. She's all bummed. She's reaching for headphones for her Walkman so she doesn't have to listen to this. Her bedroom is like such a Y2K dream bedroom.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

I feel like my bedroom looks like this.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Now she's singing along to her tape. It's a CD Morgan. And now Maya is moving to the rhythm of the song that she obviously can't hear because she's at her house in the closet. Her hands are on her pelvis. And now Anna's singing is kind of like the soundtrack to Maya's self-stimulation in the closet. She's rubbing against the entryway. She's got this like possessed hypnotic look in her eyes. Wait, what a teen idol is she kissing, a poster of? That's not JTT. But she's making out with a young teen idol. Anna's looking like sad and traumatized. Maya's having the opposite experience and is just staring blankly off. She's pulling her PJ pants back up. And she may have orgasmed or at least just finished. Now Maya's humping her pillow on her bed and the mattress is making a noise. Maya is now in front of a full-length mirror with her legs on either side, touching her pelvis. Her mom finally gets her, so she throws on her pajama pants or underwear.

SPEAKER_03 13:03

You're always ready.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Oh my god, what a brave 13-year-old just like fully going in front of a full-length mirror to look at her labio. I feel like some people take so long to have that first mirror moment.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

I love the wet sounds. Whatever they use to make those, they're perfection. And I was like, yes, love. The only thing I wish they would have added, I feel like after a certain point in the episode, maybe it should have started to get really raw and painful to do it. You know, because it's a very fragile organ, and you can really do some damage if you're going as hard as it seems like she is.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

I also would have loved to have seen the corner of a table involved in some way.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Absolutely. It's so interesting to approach this scene as far as like intimacy coordination. I mean, they didn't have one, obviously, and the writer is also the producer who's also the one who's performing the action alone. She can kind of do whatever she wants at this point. But I thought she did a really good job of performing these actions. And I think the only thing intimacy-wise would be maybe just shifting the hands slightly differently. But there is something that is really interesting about the failure to do it well. The wrong usage of hands in a completely bizarre fashion, kind of rolling around the doorframe or just shaking hips instead of moving the hand itself. There is something really hilarious and fascinating and real about how bizarre it looks.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Yes. I appreciate a lot of the wrongness of the scene in terms of her technique because she's just discovering this for the first time.

unknown 14:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

I I know there has been some controversy since the show about the ethics around having 30-year-olds play 13-year-olds, specifically in the scenes where they're supposed to be crushing on another 13-year-old who's actually being played by a 13-year-old. And I fully understand that. These two scenes are really great examples of the benefits of having an adult play a 13-year-old because you don't have to worry about any ethical lines being crossed.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

That's totally true. And that actually makes me want to show you another moment in this episode that kind of speaks to this exact thing, actually. She's in class and wanting to leave class so that she can masturbate again. She's developed a bit of an addiction to it, and she is starting to get turned on by body parts. This moment is starting at 4:14.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Maya and Anna are both in class in the back. Maya is looking at ears of other students. Maya's not really listening. She's staring ahead. And now she's looking at young boys' eyebrows, a sweater, spiked up hair, eyeglasses, knees, the inside of the elbow, math problems or a map. You mentioned she was talking about the randomness of her arousal when she was that age. And they're choosing traditionally not sexy body parts, or at least like body parts that aren't like trad- I don't want to kink shame anybody if you're like really into ears or eyebrows. I can understand bumping up against any sexualized imagery of 13-year-olds. I feel like they're threading this pretty well. They're showing the spiked hair, the ear, the knees, and it's meant to be silly, even though her character is looking at them in a sexual way. Like it's all a joke. So it keeps it light enough for me at least, where like I don't feel uncomfortable. I'm more like getting nostalgic. I remember that time in my life. I remember when like so many boys had the spiked up hair. Oh my god, the spiked up hair. When it was bleached at the tips, the frosted tips. That was the look. That was the look. That was the luke. Oh my gosh. I had such a crush on a boy when I was 13 who had the spiked up frosted tips.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

He was a hot boy at camp, though, so I wasn't alive. Like literally everyone was crushing on him.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Ugh. See, I went to musical theater camp and all the boys were gay, so it was a very different experience. You can still crush on a gay boy. That's okay. No, listen, and I did, as we all did.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Go back to the scene. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

It threaded the lines so perfectly. It has less to do with the sexuality of anyone involved in those images as much as it has to do with anything that reminds you of anything that reminds you of sex in any capacity. Which is just really real and doesn't put any of the 13 or so-year-old actors in any kind of position or in any kind of sexualized view.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

They cast actual 15 and under people that they didn't find an 18-year-old who could pass as 13, which is very hard to do. And I think it's part of what brought the authenticity to the show. So you could feel like the innocence of those characters as opposed to like an adult cosplaying as a 13-year-old.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

But I also think it speaks to the awkwardness of that age and feeling so othered and so like I'm a monster compared to everyone else around me.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

I must be some kind of freak. Because and this is something you were hinting at earlier. This was the shame, is even if you weren't raised in an environment where you were explicitly taught that arousal or masturbation or anything, any kind of sexuality is shameful. The fact that people don't talk about it can make you internalize the message that it's shameful. Because it's like, well, if no one's talking about it, it must be bad. And if no one's talking about it, I might be the only one who's going through this.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

In this episode, alongside Maya's blossoming sexuality, is their friend Sam, who with his guy friends is watching porn and talking about porn in public spaces, and they keep being called pervs, or they, or Maya and Anna call them pervs. Yeah. Because it's projection in some capacity, where they're like, well, if they're pervs for watching porn, like, am I a perv for doing this too? Yeah. And the whole episode, I mean, it's called Ochichan because Ochi-Chan is Maya's grandfather, whose birthday it is also. And on the birthday, like she is told by her mom that Ochichan is watching them all the time, even when they sleep. And so she's like horrified that Ochichan has been watching her do this. But then she eventually, at the end of the episode, realizes that if she puts the covers over her head, then Ochichan can't see what she's doing. He can't see through covers. Yeah, obviously. I mean, that's that's little kid logic for you. Maya stated in that NPR article that this was semi-based on both her and Anna's childhood experiences with this. And she said, I thought I was a complete pervert. I thought I was going to jail. I thought I was a monster. I had no knowledge of what I was doing, and yet I instinctually knew how to do it, and that really scared me. And that's such a real experience that so many people have. Masturbation is something that's really shied away from. I mean, my mother taught me about let's call them birds and the bees, really just about the mechanics of how child rearing occurs when I was about four. Because she's like, let's get this out of the way. Let me teach you. I'm gonna teach you what's going on. Great. Doesn't you know?

SPEAKER_00 21:03

Are you really surprised that your career is all about sex?

SPEAKER_01 21:09

I feel like surprise isn't the word, as much as like, huh, okay. Yeah, all right, I'm on board. Yeah. Yeah. But she explained it to me really early, but we never really talked about masturbation or the pleasure of the experience. We really just talked about the physiology and the mechanics of the action. When it came time for me to discover this for myself, I really had no frame of reference. And I just was like, this is my life now.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Great. No, I I feel you. It was something that I discovered on my own. I don't remember the first time specifically, but I remember I was pretty young and I hadn't had any conversations around that with my parents. And I remember doing it for a while, and then we were talking about kid logic. Before I started to feel like maybe I was gonna make my vagina dirty or like infected. And so then I should only do it over the underwear because that will make it sanitary.

SPEAKER_04 22:15

I did the same thing. I was like, this is sanitary.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

This is how you do it and you're fine.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Not doing it is not an option, but I found this compromise. Even though I like, I wasn't a kid with dirty hands. Like I washed my hands and everything, but I still was like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Hilarious. Hilarious that that was a universal experience, but I love.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

All right, should we jump into the spy scale? Oh my god, yes, let's do it. Welcome to the spice scale, or not so scientific way of rating intimacy scenes based on consent and power dynamics, technical craft and coordination excellence, and heat factor. Each category gets a score from one to five, with five being the highest. Then we add it all up to give the scene a final letter grade. Let's start with consent and power dynamics: how the scene depicts consent and power in the story, and if known, behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Consensual across the board, pretty much. But you have the writer who's also the producer, who's also the actor, agreeing to do this action. It's actually really interesting. One credit I left out was Matsuko Erskine, who plays Maya's mother in the show and is actually her mother in real life as well. Oh. So we have an interesting dynamic where it's both Maya simulating self-pleasure right as her literal Ma walks into the room. Wow. As well as young Maya and her mother with the awareness that this is something that was presumably happening when Maya was young. Kind of insane power dynamics, actually. But I think also there's this element of hiding what she's doing. You know, she's in the dark, she's in the closet, she's trying to make little sound. She she says, like, oh, I'm in bed. We have the element of Ochichan watching, potentially. So the power dynamics are contextually interesting.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

I could say that her arousal is its own character. Ooh, okay. Like how New York is its own character in a lot of like in everything, where it's like, and the fifth friend is New York. Her scene partner is her throbbing labia. And I love it. And she's trying to overpower it and is having a hard time doing that.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

I think we should call this episode her throbbing labia, but that's just me. Absolutely. Yeah. Maya has no power over the labia character.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

Yeah, well, because she's sacrificing her friendship responsibilities to explore this. It's kind of it kind of reminds me of Sex in the City when they have the rabbit episode where Charlotte discovers this magical vibrator and she just cancels all of her plans and stays inside all day because she's addicted to it. And they treat her kind of like an addict and have an intervention.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

The labia majora has taken over the majority. No, that's the worst joke I've ever made. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_04 25:36

The labia is her majora.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

I'm coming that shit out. And she's in the minora. Oh my lord. I am embarrassed.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

I am ashamed. I am a monster.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

I'm not. I love a dumb pun.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Oh god, it was so bad. Anyway. Um. And on that note, uh, what would you give? Consent and power dynamic. I do think it's a five. Absolutely. Which gets us to technical crafted coordination excellence, the staging film coverage, modesty protection, choreography, and over a overall execution of the scene.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

I know you had thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

I have thoughts.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

You have thoughts and questions. Tell me.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

I am on the fence. The two-arm situation looks a little strange. When she's in the closet, she's like sort of swinging her hips back and forth with her arms in her underwear.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Oh, like side to side as opposed to back and forth. Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Side to side. And that part wasn't sold a hundred percent for me. Away from the authenticity of that first scene, the second scene completely abandons authenticity for the most part. It's supposed to look funny. And it does. And it is successful in looking funny. But the two arm thing did lose me a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Yeah, I do feel you on the two-arm move that she's doing in that first scene, especially when we see her from behind and her elbows are like all the way out, and you see them going back and forth, back and forth, and it looks like her hands are going to the same place on her pelvis. And I keep thinking, like, anatomically, what's happening?

SPEAKER_01 27:17

Possibly her fingertips are riding the outside of the labium majora and pressing inward towards the clitoris and rubbing vertically up and down. So you can make a couple of things.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Her elbows aren't positioned to do that. I know. That's why I'm like, she's coming down from above. And she's like moving them forward rather than like forward and back. Maybe she is stimulating the labia majora and not her clitoris, but even then, it feels like a weird motion to me to be going essentially sideways. It's, I mean, it's funny. I would forgive the exaggerated motion if I felt like what they were doing was more possible. Because that's the thing, is like she's experimenting, she's discovering. So I don't knock the scene for having her do something that I'm like, I don't think that's gonna make her feel good, but she like keeps doing it. So that indicates that like this does feel good. And I'm like, I don't, I don't know. Yeah, I kind of want to give it a three for that scene. I want to give it a three. I like the second scene where she's like rubbing on the corner of her closet door entryway, and she has her feet up like on either side of her full-length mirror. Like that, I'm like, that stuff was all really funny. And that that also felt real, where it's like, then you figure out, like, oh, maybe I can use something other than my hands.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

I love going the going against the door frame. I love the pillow, like these are all really funny coordination-wise, technique-wise, I don't find it terribly believable, but he factor-wise, I do think it's the exact erotic charge and sexual tension they were looking for. So I think I'm kind of getting stuck between the two. So I sort of want to get give technical craft because I don't believe it a hundred percent. I want to give it a three, and I want to give heat factor a five.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

That totally makes sense to me. The arousal is very clear and it's at the level that they want it to be at. It's giving me the nostalgia, and I'm like remembering that time, I'm remembering what that felt like. That kind of marks the success of this scene.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

We're doing heat factor as intended. I think it's very successful in the heat or rotting the charge that they're trying to portray as this sort of addictive, intentional can't stop, won't stop attitude. Um so that is a B. Just a sexy little B. Just a happy little sexy little B. Love L B. This scene matters, like just in a similar way to Book Smart. It's this exploring the sexuality of children without sexualizing children. And exploring those feelings, the feelings of shame, the feelings of being watched, of not knowing right from wrong and trying to explore it. There is an article in the Hollywood Reporter where Maya Erskine also said, even when it came out, there was this fear of did we cross the line? Is this okay? Which is sort of crazy that we're thinking that way. We shouldn't, and that is so illuminating. She is a 30-year-old woman playing a 13-year-old. The line there is really strange and jagged to begin with. Every coming of age story is a boy coming of age and exploring his sexuality, yes, his penis, and what that looks like. I never see anyone masturbating who has a vulva. Like it's really exciting.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

We especially grew up with so many movies about male adolescents and burgeoning sexuality and how silly and weird it is, and the shame that comes with it, and and it's played for laughs, even with young actors. And there's been conversations since the show came out about the ethics, where you have these two adult women playing 13-year-olds, and they're having like crushes and first kisses. And when they do a kiss, they cut it so that it's just two lips and they're two adult actor lips. So there's no like adults kissing children, but there's still like the scenes where it's building up to it or them flirting with them. And I think people have bumped up against that and questioned the ethics around that.

SPEAKER_01 31:48

I don't feel that it is ethically problematic for me. And the reason I don't is because the children are not being sexualized, like we've talked about. There are moments of crushes, but it's really more verbal confirmation of crushes. I don't feel that there's any intention to either put these young actors in any kind of situation, nor is there any context outside of comedy that the actors are intentionally expressing their crushes toward. The reality is also that if these were two men who were in their 30s looking at young girls in this capacity, it would be a very, very different vibe and it would not play in the same way.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

And I think this is crunchy. I do fully understand why people feel uncomfortable. I remember at the time reading about all the precautions they were taking to tell these stories as authentically as possible and not involving the young actors in parts of scenes that they felt were inappropriate, like, for example, with the kissing that I was mentioning earlier. In terms of a scene where, you know, like I'm thinking of a scene where Anna is talking to the boy she has a crush on. And the scene is mostly just her feeling awkward and like giggling. And the joke is really on her being awkward, and he's not giving much back. He's just having a conversation with her. They're not forcing him to be flirty with her, as far as I can remember. But I do understand why other people might feel that way. I don't think it's invalid. I just don't personally share those feelings based on like my memory of the show.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

Of course. No, I don't think it's invalid. I understand where they're coming from for sure. The point they're trying to make is how you feel like you are a monster in the space and that you don't fit in physically. Your body is confusing compared to everyone else's. If they had made all of the actors adults, it would have been truly bizarre and the joke wouldn't have landed. I think if all of them were children, including Maya and Anna, then that would have been even more difficult to watch and more intense, and they wouldn't have been able to do as much with it because of parameters around child actors. Like they wouldn't have been able to do these masturbation moments at all. And if they had done any level of them, they would have been way curbed back, and there probably still would have been some level of uproar about it. You are looking at a comedy series, and there is no level of reality to it, it is fiction. It's like Shayla said, it's fiction. These are imaginary situations that are inspired by real life. And while I understand any level of difficulty when it comes to 30-year-old women talking about 12-year-old boys, it is with the parameters of these two 30-year-old women playing 13-year-old people.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

I don't work with children often. I think it is tricky. And I'd be curious to talk to an IC who specializes in working with children, their feelings on this, because I do think it's really important to have an intimacy coordinator for young people. And that's not always if they're doing scenes that involve kissing. I know ICs who've worked on projects that have what's called familial intimacy, which sounds incestual, but it's not. It's just like, what happens when you're supposed to hug an adult who's playing your parent but isn't your actual parent in real life? And empowering the young people to understand that this is your body, you can say no, having an adult reaffirm that you don't have to do anything that makes you uncomfortable, and someone who's like looking out and looking for signs that there's discomfort or hesitation or anything. I remember reading somewhere that children under the age of seven have a hard time telling the difference between reality and play. And so it can get really confusing for actors who are under that age.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

I was watching This Is Us and I was thinking about familial intimacy as well. And there is a moment where young Randall and Mandy Moore, um, they're at this pool and he's in swim trunks and she's putting sunscreen on his chest and his back. And I think that would be a perfect example of a time that an intimacy coordinator would be really helpful because this child may have never met this person before, and suddenly they're touching all over their chest, their arms, their legs, you know. That's a very specific level of closeness.

SPEAKER_00 36:50

And obviously, this isn't suggesting that anything nefarious was going to happen or that that child actor was uncomfortable in any way. It's just more having another adult in the room who can support the child and enforce that. We talk a lot about how actors in general have been so trained to not be difficult and just say yes and give your body over to the work. And that is especially true when you're younger. And some of these kids are the breadwinners of their families. And so that makes the coercive nature and being on the job even stronger. And so I think it's even more important that we have people on set who are just there for the kid so that they can fully understand as much as possible what the options are.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

All right. Do you do you have anything? Well, we have something to plug to start. We do. We were both on a podcast recently, uh Happier in Hollywood, where we were interviewed about intimacy coordination. We had such a lovely time. They were so kind and definitely give that a listen. It's out now.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

I love talking to Liz and Sarah. I agree that it's a really great podcast about Hollywood in general. I highly recommend it. In addition to this one.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

And it's about being happier in Hollywood and how to stay happy when the environment isn't exactly conducive to that. Let's do the credits. The credits. Thanks so much for listening to Faking It. This episode's research and context was done by me, Ariel.

SPEAKER_00 38:27

You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every other hump day, Wednesday.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

If this was good for you, the best way to support our show is to follow the podcast and leave a quick reading or review. It takes less than 30 seconds and it really helps us.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

For example, we have this lovely new review from Gina TD. Gina TD said, really unique and in-depth analysis on what really goes into making the scenes hyper-realistic. Next time, pick a better movie than the room. Thank you, Gina. Thank you, Gina. Tell what friend who loves spicy movie secrets about us. Find us on social media at faking it the pod. Want to get involved?

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Head to patreon.com slash faking it the pod. For just one dollar, you can request scenes for us to break down. For$10, you get bonus content and never before seen footage. And for$5, you get a shout out like these listeners. Thank you, Lee and Kiki Brown, as always.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

This episode was produced by Ariel Lee Cohen, social media and branding by Morgan Smith. Our theme song is faking it by Mike Getz. Credits for the film or show we reacted to are in the episode caption. Stay real fakers.