{"id":908903,"date":"2026-05-28T13:17:59","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T18:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/anna-konkle-of-pen15-revisits-her-complicated-childhood-in-debut-memoir-the-sane-one\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T13:17:59","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T18:17:59","slug":"anna-konkle-of-pen15-revisits-her-complicated-childhood-in-debut-memoir-the-sane-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/28\/anna-konkle-of-pen15-revisits-her-complicated-childhood-in-debut-memoir-the-sane-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Anna Konkle of PEN15 Revisits Her Complicated Childhood In Debut Memoir, The Sane One"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cWhen something\u2019s awkward, I inherently find it funny,\u201d Anna Konkle, best known for cocreating the Emmy-nominated Hulu comedy series Pen15<\/em><\/a>, tells Vanity Fair<\/em>. \u201cSo even in the most painful moments, there tends to be someone above me going, \u2018I know that\u2019s hurting you right now, but that\u2019s also really fucking funny.\u2019\u201d That inner voice inspired her to write her debut memoir, The Sane One<\/em><\/a>, a deeply personal look at Konkle\u2019s complex dynamics with her mother Janet and father Peter, whom she refers to now as \u201ceccentric, funny outsiders.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book is not about Konkle\u2019s comedy career, but rather the familial dysfunction that may have helped cultivate it. Like other stories of fractured childhoods, including Jennette McCurdy\u2019s I\u2019m Glad My Mom Died<\/em><\/a> and Jeannette Walls\u2019s The Glass Castle<\/em>, Konkle writes in unflinching detail about how her relationship with her parents devolved under the weight of a messy divorce and financial strain. \u201cThere\u2019s been so much validation that I wasn\u2019t actually the freak that I thought I was,\u201d Konkle says of shedding any shame that comes with sharing her story. \u201cWe\u2019re all probably a lot more freaky than we even know\u2014at that age, and always. That\u2019s the working thesis of my art, is to push the edge of exposing freakiness until people are like, \u2018Okay, you\u2019re alone on that. You\u2019re on an island.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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‘The Sane One’ by Anna Konkle<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Konkle\u2019s complicated bond with her father, whom she once believed to be her \u201cchildhood best friend,\u201d is a focal point. During a particularly tense visit to his Florida home in her early 20s, Konkle confronts her dad about being inappropriate with her and other female friends. He denies any wrongdoing, but the fight incites a five-year estrangement between Konkle and Peter. Before his 2019 death, Konkle\u2019s father battled prostate cancer, which spread to his lungs shortly after their reconciliation.<\/p>\n

Konkle learned her father would be checked into hospice while on the set of PEN15<\/em>, the semi-autobiographical Hulu series she cocreated and starred in with her close friend Maya Erskine, in which they both played middle-school versions of themselves surrounded by a cast of actual children. Now, with the two-season show wrapped in 2021, Konkle has unearthed another chapter of her complicated coming of age. In conversation with VF<\/em>, the author shares where she stands with her mother, why she and Erskine are better friends than business partners, and how she accidentally got Meghan Markle back to acting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Vanity Fair<\/em>: How long after closing the PEN15<\/em> chapter<\/a> did you consider exploring your adolescence through a book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anna Konkle<\/em>: In the last weeks of my dad\u2019s life\u2014granted he was on morphine\u2014he was like, \u201cWrite our story. The whole story.\u201d And it hit me like, \u201cOh, he\u2019s aware, even on morphine, of how impactful our journey has been on me.\u201d There was a layeredness to my relationship with my dad that would have been simplified in film or TV form. I felt like the literary world got off the bat, but I don\u2019t think that would have happened if I was trying to pitch it [as a show or movie.]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Did mining your childhood with PEN15<\/em> prepare you for writing the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

PEN<\/em> was helpful in that I had cocreators Sam Zvibleman and Maya Erskine going, \u201cThis show works when we are very accurately, unapologetically holding up a mirror to what the moment really was.\u201d And it\u2019s the most exciting to hold up a mirror to the moments you haven\u2019t seen that often: masturbation, crying after my first kiss. That\u2019s not in the Hilary Duff version of middle school<\/a>, you know?<\/p>\n

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Maya and Anna on PEN15<\/em> (played by show cocreators Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle).<\/span>BY ALEX LOMBARDI\/HULU.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

This is the gift that I got from PEN15<\/em> because there were so many moments of me being like, \u201cOh my God, you too?\u201d I did an interview the other day and afterwards an intern was like, \u201cMy dad tried to kiss my friends on the lips too.\u201d And I was like, \u201cWeird, what\u2019s up with dads?\u201d… I have realized that my work is where I get to be like an anarchist. Maybe when I\u2019m 99 I\u2019ll have arrived at, \u201cFuck all of you. Who cares?\u201d I\u2019m not there yet, but my art is ahead of me in that, I think.<\/p>\n

How has your bond with Maya Erskine, whom you write about meeting in a comedy program with John Early and Rachel Bloom, changed since your daily working relationship ended?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Maya\u2019s still one of my absolute best friends. We deeply connected, as you read in the book, during the early days of estrangement with my father. That was a time of complete unraveling for me where I wasn\u2019t comfortable showing my undoneness that had been saved for the loud nights behind closed doors at my house. I was always told growing up, without words, you put on a happy face, do well in school, look well-adjusted. That\u2019s the job.<\/p>\n

That time\u2014[Konkle pauses, her voice breaking<\/em>] I don\u2019t want to get emotional\u2014of meeting Maya and moving to LA and having what felt like her just cradle me was… She appreciated going against the grain. She was like a teacher and a caretaker, as were a lot of other friends, like Jessy Hodges, who\u2019s married to Beck Bennett<\/a>. I lived in their house for a while. This community that surrounded me\u2014it was the opposite of what I thought LA was supposed to be, which was fake and Rodeo Drive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle during a 2021 interview with host Seth Meyers.<\/span>NBC\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The work with Maya was coming from a need to laugh and survive that hard time. It was a very, very, creatively fulfilling, amazing time, but it was so hard and brutal. The act of being business partners…It ends up being before a best friendship because we\u2019re working 16-hour days for years, and it\u2019s all about work. So [now] we basically got to totally give back to the friendship. It feels like coming home in some ways. She\u2019s part of my community first, not my business partner, if that makes sense?<\/p>\n

Did appearing on Hacks<\/em>\u2019 final season<\/a> make you miss working in episodic comedy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a total love for Paul [W. Downs]<\/a> specifically\u2014being in [your show] and showrunning, going from being in front of the camera, and then running back to the monitors to see how that scene played out. That was very much me and Maya\u2019s experience. Lucia [Aniello] and Jen [Statsky] are incredible. I\u2019m constantly reminded how tired I was when I see other showrunners. It was further confirmation that I want to show-run again, but in-front and<\/em> behind [the camera]: no, thank you. I\u2019m trying to focus behind the camera, at least for a couple years. Then maybe I\u2019ll go back to insisting on playing freaks, if I\u2019m going to play anyone.<\/p>\n

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\"Image<\/picture><\/span><\/p>\n

Anna Konkle as final season love interest to Hacks<\/em> co-creator and star Paul W. Downs.<\/span>Courtesy of Warner Bros.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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You are in the film Close Personal Friends<\/em>, which marks Meghan Markle\u2019s return to the screen.<\/a> Did you have any interactions with her on set?<\/strong><\/p>\n

No, I filmed in London and LA with Lily Collins, Brie Larson<\/a>, and Jack Quaid. My character is childhood best friends with Lily\u2019s character, who\u2019s getting close with Brie, who\u2019s playing a huge movie star. My character follows the tabloids on her new best friend. We got to improv. I think they went on a yacht in the story and I\u2019m grilling them like, \u201cWas Meghan Markle there? Are we talking Harry?\u201d And in the improv, they were like, \u201cYeah, she was there.\u201d I totally forgot about it. Then the director Jason Orley was like, \u201cOh, I wanted to tell you, we asked Meghan to be in [the movie] off of that.\u201d I heard she was nice on set!<\/p>\n

In The Sane One<\/em>, you write that, at some of your darkest moments, you contemplated self-harm and questioned the physical nature of your relationship with your father. What was important to you in sharing those vulnerable thoughts?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Subjects that I feel the greatest shame or discomfort around sharing are, for whatever reason, what I\u2019m compelled to write about. I was first pitching that in the PEN15<\/em> writers\u2019 room in the \u201cVendy Wiccany\u201d episode in season two that I wrote. Everyone\u2019s supportive, but it was maybe an odd place to put it. It felt like a big admission, but I don\u2019t know how it hit.<\/p>\n

The feeling of wanting to disappear in its simplest form, or passive suicidal ideation, according to my therapist, started when I was really young. It started with recognizing how much pain I was in at an early age. Then it gave me permission to start detailing my childhood day-to-day. And once I started to do that, it made more sense how I ended up where I did with my dad in my mid-20s. The level of pain was the gateway to detailing the memories. Why am I literally ending up in a fetal position on the floor wanting to disappear, fantasizing about self-harm, after I fell out with my mom?<\/p>\n

Putting the puzzle pieces together of how things atrophied with my dad, I realized it was in conjunction with my sexual relationship with men in general. I\u2019m having my sexual awakening\/realizing there were a ton of ways I did not feel comfortable sexually, but thought I would. There\u2019s discomfort with being around my father physically, and realizing there was synergy to those two things.<\/p>\n

Then I\u2019m in the car with my dad and his hand on my thigh feels different than before. There\u2019s physical boundaries with my dad that I started to realize I needed and didn\u2019t feel comfortable asking for. Or when I didn\u2019t feel as respected as I wanted to be in conjunction with feeling like my body wasn’t respected as I was experimenting with sexuality for the first time with guys. It was not where I intended to go when I pitched the book. Some stories knock at me, like, \u201cTell this<\/em> story.\u201d It felt integral to tell the full story of this murky time in my life, and so it had to be in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Anna Konkle at the premiere of the Apple TV series Murderbot<\/em>, on which she starred in 2025.<\/span>Kristina Bumphrey\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

What has it been like to share the book with your mother?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mom has been nervous since I pitched it four years ago. But she has been incredibly supportive. I\u2019ve had many deep conversations along the way of, \u201cI just want you to know this is the scene or chapter that I\u2019m writing.\u201d There\u2019s a deep breath on the other side of the phone, sometimes an apology, and gathering herself back up, going, \u201cIt\u2019s your art and I\u2019m proud of you and I\u2019m sorry.\u201d What more could I ask for? It\u2019s probably why we\u2019re quite close now. I do feel bad that I\u2019m dredging up difficult memories when she\u2019s worked really hard to move forward and grow. But the fact that she\u2019s not fighting against me writing all this and releasing it, tells me that there\u2019s real accountability. And there\u2019s been a lot for me to take accountability about as well.<\/p>\n

You write: \u201cNo matter how many times you try to kill it, self-doubt will always find a safe home inside the making of art.\u201d How did you keep self-doubt at bay while writing the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some people are probably really<\/em> not going to like this. I obviously hope there\u2019s more people that really like it. But if a couple people who felt the level of leperness that I felt after Florida with my dad, or are going through that dark period like when I first moved to LA, or are even younger, their parents fighting and they feel alone, if [the book] does for somebody else what so many artists have done for me, telling their story and being honest about low points in their life, then it\u2019s totally worth it. You just have to write assuming that\u2019s going to happen.<\/p>\n

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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