Benito Skinner’s Love For Britney Spears Runs As Deep As Her Lore

Fresh off the release of Overcompensating on Amazon Prime (and Season 3 of his podcast Ride), Benito Skinner is feeling overwhelmed — and lucky. He can’t log onto TikTok without fan edits, plot theories, and character ships inundating his algorithm, and he stops to watch all of them... unless they feature his semi-autobiographical character “Benny.” Those still feel a little too surreal to watch. “I’ve taken half of a deep breath,” Skinner, 31, says. “I’m blown away, and it feels amazing to get DMs from queer people — and even some straight guys, randomly — saying they saw themselves in my show.”

Overcompensating started as a live show Skinner first performed back in 2019. One thing that hasn’t changed in the jump to television? Its tribute to Britney Spears — an artist, Skinner says, who has been there for him at every stage of his life, from closeted boyhood till now.

When I was 6, I had this full orange outfit I would wear to dance to Britney Spears’ “Oops!... I Did It Again” in the living room for my family. It featured an Oregon State University T-shirt — their mascot is Benny the Beaver, so it was pretty on brand to wear, and my sister went there. I’d wear that with orange cargoes, and a yellow technical vest from Old Navy on top. I wore the vest so I could rip it off, like, Boom! A big reveal.

Oops!... I Did It Again changed my life, but honestly, so did all of Britney’s other projects and lore. In middle school, when Blackout came out, I downloaded it off Limewire, totally decimating my computer’s hard drive in my parents’ basement. The “I’m a Slave 4 U” video? I can do that choreo, in case you were wondering. “Stronger” is an important song, too — I had a huge “vest reveal” for that one.

“I’d still play her music even if people said liking her was girly or gay.”

Later, when she was a judge on The X Factor, Britney was feisty and ferocious. You could tell she was like, “I don’t really want to be here. F*ck all of you.” And her 2001 Pepsi ad? One, I want to wear that outfit, and two, it’s one of the most unbelievable pieces of Americana.

Britney was always my non-negotiable growing up. I’d still play her music even if people said liking her was girly or gay. At times, I could get away with it in a locker room because all the straight guys would be like, “She’s really hot,” so I would play into that. But really, I’d be rolling up the windows to my car and blasting “Lace and Leather” from Circus.

She’s my everything, my first and forever diva, and that’s why I had to start my live-show version of Overcompensating with “Lucky” — and the actual show with it, too. If I can, I want to start every season of the show with one of her songs. I already know the Britney song that I want to open next season. And yes, I already preordered the Balenciaga shirt with her face on it.

“In her book, she says she loves gay guys, so all I would want is to give back a little bit of that love.”

Please don’t ask me if I’ve ever seen her in concert — that’s a devastating question to ask me during Pride Month. I haven’t, but I almost saw her during her Las Vegas residency. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t see her then, knowing what I know now. Her book rocked my world. I read it in one day and sobbed almost the whole way through. I remember defending her online when the media was being so demonic to her, so reading about her journey with the conservatorship — it made me so happy she got to write that story. She’s a fighter.

I’ve never met her, but if I could, I wouldn’t want anything from her. I’d love to make her laugh, of course, but I wouldn’t want to bombard her. I wouldn’t want to hug her. I wouldn’t even want a picture with her. In her book, she says she loves gay guys, so all I would want is to give back a little bit of that love. I want nothing but to be able to tell her, “I love you. I think you’re so special. I hope you know and feel that.”