Charli XCX's Coming-Of-Age Series Is Crushing It On Prime Video - SlashFilm (2025)

Prime Video

After launching a Gen-Z movement with 2024's "Brat Summer," British pop star Charli XCX looks set to shift her focus to acting for the foreseeable future. Her upcoming projects also sound interesting, as they include collaborations with A24 and the prolific Japanese horror director Takashi Miike — who gave us one of the most disturbing movies of all time with "Audition," as well as an infamous "Masters of Horror" episode that went all out. It's clear that the "Guess" hitmaker is interested in working with some provocative auteur filmmakers, but she's also game for cropping up in fun comedy shows, as evidenced by her role in "Overcompensating," a new series that's storming the Prime Video Charts.

FlixPatrol reports that "Overcompensating" is sitting in the sixth position at the time of this writing, wedged between "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning" and "Battleship." Created by and starring Benito Skinner, the series follows a college freshman football player, Benny, who struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, so he tries to act macho to fit in. After befriending a loner named Carmen (Wally Baram), however, Benny embarks on a journey of self-discovery while adjusting to the crazy world of college.

Charli XCX's tunes often soundtrack the show and she appears in the fourth episode, "Boom Clap," which includes a subplot set at one of her concerts that sees her lash out and make jokes about class A drugs. It's a very fun — and self-deprecating — performance that's bound to make her fans warm to the "Von Dutch" singer even more. Of course, getting a star of Charli's magnitude to appear in a new — and unproven — series says a lot about the show's quality, but the story of how Skinner approached her is entertaining in its own right — and it involves alcohol.

Prime Video

Hollywood is a complex machine where agents act typically as intermediaries between creators, studios, and the stars. Sometimes, though, getting drunk and approaching someone you admire is all it takes to get them to star in a project. In an interview with Deadline, Benito Skinner revealed that he spotted Charli XCX at a party after getting tipsy on two margaritas. He knew right there and then that he had to try and recruit her, and after receiving some words of encouragement from his boyfriend, he approached the pop star. The rest is history:

"I think it's why she's a true visionary and an artist. This kid comes up to her and is like, 'I love you, will you do the music for my show?' She was like, 'Send me the script, babe.' I sent her the script, and she signed on to do the music on a Monday. She hired my boyfriend to work with her on a Tuesday. She doesn't play games."

In the end, it was a win-win situation for the creator of "Overcompensating" and the leader of the "Brat" movement. Skinner got to include Charli and her tunes in his show, and the pop star has a hit series on her resume as she continues her burgeoning acting career. All it took was some of Skinner's moxie, and a good script, to make magic happen.