Wally Baram Is the Breakout Star of Your Next Favorite Comedy

Wally Baram originally wanted to be a cowgirl. But after taking equestrian classes at her Central California high school, she changed her mind. “That was way too much labor,” says Baram, who stars in the new Prime Video series Overcompensating. “My body’s clearly not built for lifting and riding, and my legs don’t fit around a horse quite so much.”

Instead, Baram chose a different, perhaps just as laborious career path: becoming a stand-up comic, sitcom writer, and actor. “My other odd pipe dream was comedy,” she says. “I was in the business of exploring dreams then.” So, she took a gap year before going to college just to test the waters. “I was like, ‘Let’s see if this is something, and then if not, I’ll just go and study economics and do that.’”

Baram did go to college after the gap year, but comedy clubs continued to call her name, and she she dropped out a year and a half later. She’s been on stage since she was about 18 years old, and performed around the country. She then took on writing jobs at hit television shows Shrinking and What We Do in the Shadows, before landing at Overcompensating, Benito Skinner’s new comedy about a young, closeted jock named Benny (played by Skinner himself) coming to terms with his sexuality. Baram plays Carmen, Benny’s first friend at college who is also discovering herself. While working in the writers’ room, Baram identified with Carmen, sent in a few self-tapes, and booked the part, marking her first major acting role. In many ways, her journey feels like a fairytale.

“It’s absurd. When it happened, my lawyer called me and he was like, ‘So, what’s going on?’ as though I was going to tell him that I had something going on behind these scenes,” she says with a smirk. “I was like, ‘I have no idea. It feels like I’ve tumbled upwards in the craziest way.’”

Baram holds her own in the show. Her character Carmen kills at Edward Fortyhands, is a secret video game goddess (she plays a fictional game called Slut Slayer) and, like any other college freshman, makes massive mistakes along the way. Overcompensating captures the intricacies of the college experience, and Carmen serves as a major driving point. Below, the star talks about her role, working with Charli xcx, and more.

I mean, “How did this happen?” is something I keep asking myself. It’s absurd. I originally met to be a writer on the show back in [January 2024]. It was after the writers’ strike, so everyone was scavenging like rodents for the scraps of what could be work. I read the script, and I was like, “There’s this character that is just very similar to me.” She has this crazy hair. She’s awkward and can’t quite figure out how to do the same jig that everyone else is doing socially, and she also overcompensates with romance.

That was a major issue for me in high school through my early 20s. When I read that I was like, “Oh my gosh. I have so many stories about a young person trying to overcompensate with love and feeling miserably and feeling unrewarded by that experience.” So, I met [with the team] as a writer, and then Benny and I just got along really well, and then I wrote on the show with zero inkling that I would ever be in the show, especially this role. It feels insane that it’s happening in this way that feels nearly harmonious, because it just felt so that there were elements of it that felt very serendipitous.

I took a gap year and started working. And then, I went to college, and I’m like, why are we caring so much about things that are not going to extend beyond these four years? It made me leave college altogether. [When you’re in a bubble,] you’re going to think every little thing is so big. It’s just inherent in that time of your life. That was something we talked about in the [writers’] room. If these things are going to be plot points, we really have to understand how much [college students] care about these things. It has to feel huge because in college, everything feels so huge.

In the writers’ room, I think a lot of people were trying to pull from their own experiences and things that were just real, so we could play to the most authentic portrayal of college. You’re like, “Man, I hope some of these elements haven’t evolved, or I hope that my experience was the same for other people.” That’s just part of writing from a real place. That’s the bet you make. There is stuff that made it in from my experience. I was part of a career fraternity, which is so embarrassing now, but it’s so nerdy.

The [scene of] pooping my pants in a romper, that comes from my real life. I pooped my pants in all sorts of things. I’m not going to lie. There are some people where that type of humor doesn’t land, and I think it’s funny. I’m very comfortable talking about it.

Wally Baram (center) as Carmen in Overcompensating.

They’re lying, especially if they’re men. I simply don’t believe it. When I was playing the character, I was able to bring bits of Wally to Carmen for sure. But also they are very separate. There’s a lot of me that Carmen doesn’t have, but that was an interesting process, figuring it out. What do I want to make up purely from whimsy? And then, what do I want to just save for myself that’s precious?

I would say yes, and probably also in ways that I don’t recognize because it was a really open and easy place to learn, make mistakes, and laugh at yourself. When I hear people talk about other sets, I’m like, I have no idea how good I have it that my boss is also one of my best friends. I don’t think anyone wanted to invalidate what people were bringing to the table by the fact that they hadn’t done work before. I never felt that. It was always about encouraging each other.

Benito Skinner (left) and Baram on the set of Overcompensating.

Starting early was kind of helpful, because I think people were really kind to me along the way. I was so young. I also am very earnest. On an 18-year-old, that probably looked very vulnerable. A lot of people looked out for me. It’s cut-throat in a bunch of different ways, but in starting out, it wasn’t [for me]. I was fortunate to have a really good community. Of course, I was the only girl on the line-up a lot, often the only woman of color, often the only person under 30.

There was also a time in which all of these tech companies wanted to make their own streaming services. There was even a mattress company with one. I worked for a startup called Brat. They took influencers and put them in narrative shows [that were] 10 minutes [long]. It was a great opportunity for me as someone that wanted to be paid to write, and that was kind of how I made my transition.

It was crazy. Doing the show during the same time as Brat Summer with Charli was crazy. We, as a cast, went to Sweat Tour, which is the best concert I’ve ever seen. I don’t have a scene with Charli, but I talked to her in the green room, and she was so normal, and I was like, “Wow.” She had a Sweat show, and then she shot for 11 hours, and then she had another Sweat show that evening. I couldn’t get over it, because if you see the tour, it’s so aerobic. I have no idea how that woman is standing. It’s so much physical labor. I was so impressed by the amount of work she did in those 48 hours, and I’m sure that’s just her life where she has to grind like that. I was so honored to work with her.

I knew that it was definitely pushing the boundaries of anything I had personally done in the past in an exciting way, and I just thought it was fun. A lot of the crazy stuff I do is physical, and I love physical comedy. Acting with a pink eye prosthetic is really difficult. I won’t lie. You can’t move your face a lot because that thing is actually this big, but there is just so much that it was really fun.

The lesson Baram learned from Overcompensating is: “when you’re an inauthentic version of yourself, even if you win, you’re losing”

I think it really shows how genuinely messy, particularly in college, that relationship is. I love that it’s this safe space for both of them to be themselves; but when they get caught up in being an inauthentic version of themselves for others, they create complications. I think that’s really real to life. The lesson that it makes me realize is when you’re an inauthentic version of yourself, even if you win, you’re losing.

Styled by Rebecca Grice; hair by Barb Thompson; makeup by Melanie Inglessis.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.