Bottoms director discusses the inspiration behind the “queer and female driven” teen comedy

Bottoms director Emma Seligman has opened up about creating the LGBTQ+ film in a new interview.

On 25 August, the highly anticipated lesbian teen comedy was released in select US theatres.

Starring Bodies Bodies Bodies star Rachel Sennott and The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri, the film follows two queer teenagers who create a fight club to “impress and hook up with cheerleaders”.

“Their bizarre plan works. The fight club gains traction and soon the most popular girls in school are beating each other up in the name of self-defense,” reads the official synopsis.

“But PJ (Sennott) and Josie (Edebiri) find themselves in over their heads and in need of a way out before their plan is exposed.”

Since its limited release, Bottoms has received universal acclaim from viewers and critics, with many praising the film for its “subversive” story, cast performances and over-the-top comedic moments. 

“Perfect script, perfect cast, perfect comedic delivery, #BottomsMovie serving real cinema,” one fan wrote on Twitter.

Another viewer commented: “#BottomsMovie 100% lived up to the hype. Holly shit it was AMAZING.”

In a recent interview with Variety, director Seligman – who uses she/they pronouns – gave insight into the creative process for Bottoms and revealed that it was inspired by “over-the-top high school movies.”

“I just miss that genre… I just wanted to bring it back,” they explained. 

“And part of bringing it back for me is making it queer and female-driven. But to me, that doesn’t change the genre. It just is our version of it.” 

For the film’s script, Seligman partnered with her Shiva Baby collaborator Sennott, who she described as “smart and skilful.”

“[She] understands the role that she’s in, whether it’s listening to me give her direction, or whether it’s going through the script in detail beforehand to prep for shooting, or whether it’s writing in a coffee shop, and literally having her pitch 4,000 jokes and me trying to type everything as quickly as I can,” they explained. 

Towards the end of their interview, Seligman opened up about the film’s action-packed sequences, revealing that the cast did their own stunts.

“We wanted the girls to do it. We didn’t want stunt doubles. We wanted it to look like our actors were actually kicking ass. It was just so cool to watch the actors get really good,” they said. 

“They did this boot camp with [stunt coordinator Deven MacNair], and I would come visit them at the end of the day, and pick them up from class and see what they learned. It was really fun, especially with Rachel and Ayo, because when it’s your friends, you’re like, ‘Sick. You learned that today. That’s really cool. I don’t know how to do that.”

Bottoms is expected to have a wider release on 1 September in the US. As of this writing, a UK release date has yet to be announced. 

Watch the trailer here or below.



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