Director Emma Seligman and Bodies Bodies Bodies star Rachel Sennott have opened up about their upcoming film, Bottoms.
Back in 2021, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the two creatives –who had previously teamed up on Shiva Baby – were coming together for a new LGBTQ+ teen comedy.
The film, which stars Sennott and The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri, follows two unpopular queer girls as they navigate their senior year. With their high school years coming to a close, the two girls create a fight club “to impress and hook up with cheerleaders.”
Bottoms also features Zamani Wilder (Swagger), Nicholas Galitzine (Red, White & Royal Blue), Marshawn Lynch (Murderville), Punkie Johnson (Love Life), Havana Rose Liu (No Exit), Kaia Gerber (American Horror Story), Ruby Cruz (Castle Rock), Miles Fowler (Winning Time), Dagmara Dominczyk (Succession), and Punkie Johnson (Love Life).
Ahead of its limited theatrical release in August, Sennott and Seligman opened up to Entertainment Weekly about the LGBTQ+ project and what inspired their creative process.
“We didn’t rewatch Superbad or American Pie because I think we didn’t want to be influenced by them,” Seligman said. “But definitely, we felt like queer women hadn’t gotten there due from a teen sex comedy.”
Sennott added that they referred to films like Scott Pilgrim, Jawbreakers and Jennifer’s Body to create Bottom’s teen comedy/action film dynamic.
MGM
“We said we want the girls to fight each other, we want there to be a bomb, we want them to be trying to win over the cheerleaders,” she explained.
“We had references in our mind… all these different movies. But we also wanted to make sure we weren’t [just] doing one that it as a mashup of genres. It’s a campy high school movie, but it’s also an action movie.”
Lastly, the two creatives gave insight into Edebiri’s performance as Josie, which they described as “unique and larger than life.”
“The roles were always intended for Ayo and Rachel, but I feel like [Edebiri’s] character was actually written to be quite passive and was probably modelled after, like Michael Cera or Jason Biggs, just like a nerdy guy,” Seligman said.
“I feel like somehow we were still all so surprised and excited by how her performance lifted the character off the page and made the character so unique and larger than life, but was still this grounded sort of ‘straight man’ in this crazy world.”
Bottoms is set for a limited release on 25 August, with a wider release starting 1 September.
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