Bottoms is your new favorite queer comedy. It may not be for everyone’s taste, but the raunchy, super-queer comedy starring Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott, who co-wrote the script with director Emma Seligman, is a mess of an unapologetic explosion of silly laughs.
The story follows two BFFs PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Edebiri), who are outcasts at their school. They start a fight club as a way to lose their virginities to cheerleaders. Their bizarre plan actually works and as the fight club gains traction, the most popular girls in school are beating each other up in the name of self-defense. However, PJ and Josie soon find themselves in over their heads and in need of a way out before their plan is exposed.
Raina Deerwater, Entertainment Research and analysis manager at GLAAD and a brand new member of GALECA, the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, spoke with Seligman, Sennott, and Edebiri about the journey of the film. Seligman said that she and Sennott wrote the characters based on references and movies they wanted to watch.
“When you’re setting up a ploy to have sex with people and you’re lying that will inherently make these characters, flawed and shitty,” Seligman admitted. “I don’t think we thought too hard about it. We just wanted them to be real, messy, and horny.” She pointed out that’s what teenagers are: selfish and hormonal. “That just kind of happens.”
Sennott added that these characters brains aren’t fully developed. Teenagers are still trying to figure things out and they wanted to have a movie that reflected that. As Sennott says, she wanted these characters to roll with their instinct.
When it comes to the queer representation of the film Edebiri says she feels like it is often presented as a concept. “It’s like, well, this woman is queer and this woman is queer and Black! So in order to do that, she must, they must only be able to do X, Y and Z.”
“I think also when you make the whole box queer, you can have so much more fun and there isn’t as much pressure on one perfect queer,” Seligman said. “You’re just like, ‘This one’s nice’; ‘This one is selfish’; ‘This one’s really weird’ — like you just get to like play around and it makes everything feel a little looser too.”
Bottoms, which opens in select theaters on August 25, also stars Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Dagmara Dominczyk and Marshawn Lynch.
*DISCLAIMER: This interview was filmed prior to the SAG Strike*