Sam Zvibleman on steering Pen15 from the director’s chair in season 2
Pen15 co-creator and director Sam Zvibleman discusses helming all of season 2A as Emmy voting comes to a close


Hulu’s sublime Pen15 manages to turn the most awkward kind of humor into riveting and relatable comedy. Created by Maya Erskine, Anna Konkle, and Sam Zvibleman, the half-hour series stars Erskine and Konkle, who play their 13-year-old middle school selves. Their performance is unnervingly accurate, adding to the heightened cringe factor of the show. In its second season, Pen15 waded into the emotional trenches of Maya and Anna’s coming-of-age, including pursuing crushes, discovering the pros and cons of working on the school play, and briefly believing they’re both witches in episode three, “Vendy Wiccany.”
In a recent podcast interview with IndieWire, Zvibleman and Konkle discussed how this episode subtly addresses mental health as Maya and Anna escape the latter’s parents constantly arguing with each other by imagining themselves as powerful beings. The A.V. Club spoke to Zvibleman about filming “Vendy Wiccany,” the discoveries he made about his craft while directing season 2A, and Pen15's critical success and Emmy buzz.
The A.V. Club: “Vendy Viccany” (one of The A.V. Club’s favorite episodes of 2020) is beautifully shot and a bit different from the usual episodes. What was the experience of setting it up?
Sam Zvibleman: It was a dream to direct an episode where we can play with genres. The episode has these witchy themes, so we got to play with shadows, darker tones, and darker colors. We also got to be in the woods, which was exciting. Most of our shooting usually takes place in classrooms or Anna and Maya’s homes and bedrooms. Myself, our Director of Photography Andy, and Assistant Director Roger worked really hard to time out the day so that we’d get this beautiful backlight on the girls cutting through the trees during each scene, which worked out beautifully. Sometimes you have to cast a spell for magic to happen and sometimes you have to plan it. We did both. I am quite pleased with the results.
The A.V. Club: What made the team decide that you’ll direct every episode of Pen15 season two as opposed to season one, when you directed four of the the 10 episodes?
Sam Zvibleman: It was because I was writing the episodes with the team and I just knew the show well. In the second season, it really felt like we hit it so close to what we had aspired it to be. We also had to edit the episodes very fast. We had such an aggressive turnaround from when we shot to when we had to air that there was a trust in me that we wouldn’t have to re-edit stuff and it would be closest to what the team had envisioned in the writers room. I also felt that in season one, I had filmed the last four episodes, and I was getting stronger and better and keyed in as we went along. And then we had to stop, so doing all the episodes gave me an opportunity to find the rhythm and the episodes also got stronger. We were firing on all cylinders.
AVC: How different was it this time around to take charge as a director from beginning to end?