Curtis Kone

Curtis Kone moves through the hallways of PEN15's early-2000s middle school as one of the many kids surrounding Maya and Anna, part of the ordinary social churn of seventh grade — the cliques, the crushes, the small cruelties and small kindnesses that make up a school day at that age.

PEN15 built its power by surrounding two adult leads with real thirteen-year-old actors who play the period completely straight, and Taylor Nichols fits into that texture — grounding the show's queasy, exact recreation of middle school by simply being believable as a kid still figuring out who he is.