How Overcompensating’s Mary Beth Barone Got the Part

One of my favorite scenes in Overcompensating, Benito Skinner and Scott King’s new coming-out-of-age comedy on Prime Video, comes in episode seven, “Welcome to the Black Parade.” Benny (Skinner) and his older sister Grace (Mary Beth Barone) head back to their small Idaho town for Thanksgiving, where they end up at a bar full of their old classmates. Benny, the town’s beloved, former homecoming king––and our closeted protagonist––gets instantly swarmed. Grace? Not so much.

High school wasn’t kind to Grace, and this crowd hasn’t changed. All season, she’s been shrinking herself to fit around Peter (Adam DiMarco), her lying, controlling, all-around loser boyfriend. So when she walks into the bar and realizes she’s still being sized down, still being misread, still being called “DisGrace,” a cruel, childish nickname, it hits a nerve. Obviously, if you’re a female character on TV who needs to self-actualize, you do it in a big, cathartic musical number. (See: Stevie on Schitt’s Creek or Scorpia on She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.) The bar has a karaoke setup. Grace, admittedly drunk, takes the mic and launches into the episode’s namesake: My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade.” She thrashes on stage, hair flying, all operatic angst. The scene becomes a montage (with some perfect Benny-related plot developments I won’t spoil), and by the end, it feels like Grace has found her power and fully come into her own this season.

Barone, who was also in the writers’ room, told Paste that landing the role wasn’t easy. “I don’t want people thinking I walked into it. They kind of put me through the wringer,” she said. It took four auditions for Barone to land the role of Grace: first, a chemistry read with Skinner, to make sure the pair could play siblings; then scenes with other cast members, followed by reads with Peter hopefuls. But the final test was singing a My Chemical Romance song in a room alone with the series director, the casting director, and Skinner. “They were like, ‘You just have to leave it all in the room,’” she said. “It was very surreal. I hope that footage never gets out.”