'I was feeling a very acute anxiety from my job of performing,' he says. Burnham says the character was inspired by a period in his early 20s when he was dealing with panic attacks onstage. The film centers on a socially awkward 13-year-old girl named Kayla who's navigating the final year of middle school.
Now 27, he's taken a turn behind the camera with a new film, Eighth Grade, that looks at what it's like to grow up in the age of social media. Burnham says the anxiety he felt as a young performer helped him understand the social pressure teenage girls can experience.Ĭomic Bo Burnham was still in high school when the satirical songs he posted on the Internet went viral - making him one of YouTube's first stars. Writer and director Bo Burnham talks with Elsie Fisher on the set of Eighth Grade.
