What Sofia Coppola is Kirsten Dunst, Emma Seligman is to Rachel Sennott. Since their Shiva Baby brief movie premiered on the 2018 SXSW competition, the author/director and author/actress turned each BFFs and SXSW royalty. Despite the 2020 competition getting canceled when their feature-length model of Shiva Baby was set to debut, the movie nonetheless turned a smash indie darling as soon as it was launched in 2021 and made them two names to look at.
While producing Shiva Baby, Sennott and Seligman had been already cooking their subsequent collaboration — buying and selling in funeral apparel for fisticuffs in their outrageous teen satire comedy Bottoms. In the movie, which simply premiered at SXSW, Sennott and Ayo Edebiri star as PJ and Josie, two lesbian seniors, low on their highschool’s totem pole. Both awkward in their personal proper, they’re decided to get laid by their respective cheerleader crushes Brittany (Kaia Gerber) and Isabel (Havana Rose Liu). As the jocks of their rival highschool soccer workforce begin attacking women, Josie, PJ, and their endearing buddy Hazel (Ruby Cruz) begin a battle membership after faculty program — utilizing empowerment as a entrance to hook up with cheerleaders and increase up their social standing.
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Co-written by Seligman and Sennott, Bottoms is a completely totally different beast from Shiva Baby. Its tone is totally absurd, chock stuffed with sight gags in each body, frivolous humor, and gleeful violence that provides the queer women the euphoric sex comedy they deserve. After years collaborating collectively on net shorts, most notably Comedy Central’s Rachel and Ayo Are Single, Sennott and Edebiri’s witty, offbeat banter shine in feature-length format.
Following premiere day, AP sat down with Seligman and Sennott to speak about casting a hilarious ensemble of newcomers, their collaboration course of, working with Charli XCX on the rating, and extra.
[Courtesy of Orion Pictures/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer]
You began scripting this in 2017. What was the inspiration behind Bottoms and what was it like working collectively once more?
Emma Seligman: We simply made the wanting Shiva Baby, and I pitched Rachel my solely comedy thought. With Rachel being a Virgo, she was like, “What’s your plan? What other projects do you have and what’s your timeline?” I used to be like, “I have one comedy idea and I want it to be a queer teen sex comedy for queer girls.” But additionally, I needed them to be heroes who save the day and battle in some capability. That’s all I had for her, and she or he was like, “Great. I want to see horny women,” and got here at it from her perspective. Then we hit the bottom working.
Rachel Sennott: We knew the sensation of what we needed to make, too. Then we went and brainstormed concepts. There was this large whiteboard the place we had a photograph of us in entrance of it and we wrote out the whole lot we needed to place in a film. It’s so releasing while you’re like, “We want to have a bomb, we want them to egg a house, the girls are going to be punching each other!” It felt like, for me, a lot pleasure and pleasure to really feel that creatively collectively. The film got here out of that. I bear in mind writing on the whiteboard and I’m like, “Oh, my God! We’re going to do this?”
[Working together,]I really feel like we’re capable of push one another and stability one another out. [We’ve gotten] into a spot in a relationship the place we will shoot concepts forwards and backwards the place you are like, “I’m about to say maybe the dumbest thing ever and I know she’s not going to judge me,” and if it isn’t an amazing thought, we’ll go, “Nope,” and go for one more one. We have such a language and security.
How was it to pivot from one thing like Shiva Baby to this absurdist sort comedy?
Seligman: It was actually releasing as a result of it hadn’t actually been so grounded in actuality. Writing from Rachel’s perspective, along with her humorousness, was actually liberating. Especially with queer feminine characters to permit them to do regardless of the fuck you needed within the film, it was utterly totally different, and actually enjoyable, too.
Shiva wasn’t all the time essentially the most enjoyable to put in writing about as a result of she’s crying within the toilet at sure factors. With Rachel, she simply makes me chortle so exhausting. Like you mentioned, you’ll simply pitch random concepts and so they weren’t all the time like those that made it in.
Sennott: Some of them are unhealthy. Many of them had been unhealthy.
What was it like bringing Ayo Edebiri on, who Rachel’s labored with earlier than and pouring that acquainted chemistry into characteristic size kind?
Seligman: We all the time wrote it with Ayo in thoughts. I met her earlier than I met Rachel and I used to be like, “If I ever needed that high school thing, this girl is really awkward.” I did not know she was a stand-up [comic at the time]. Then I watched Rachel’s old-fashioned sketches, NYU days, and Ayo was in them. It was like this inbuilt relationship was all the time deliberate.
Sennott: We all the time heard it in her voice, and I believe you possibly can see that within the film. She’s so superb and she or he brings a lot of her comedic timing and voice to it. I even bear in mind having our assembly at that espresso store on seventh avenue that was like, “We’re writing a movie that you’re gonna star in,” and Ayo was like, “Okay. Yeah.” Ayo was so particular as a result of it felt like everyone knows one another. We’ve been with one another on the bottom degree, even the basement degree.
Seligman: The basement degree of NYU.
Sennott: Just with the ability to come collectively on such a much bigger scale was unimaginable.
Seligman: The undeniable fact that we acquired to do this on the extent that we did was superb. Ayo is unimaginable, and I really feel like on the web page, Josie is normally learn as passive, extra insecure, and small, however Ayo made it soar off the web page, actually made it her personal. I really like the character that we wrote, however it may have [gone] so many alternative methods and her manner allowed Josie to have a lot persona. So, I’m very grateful that she ended up being a part of that.
How is it casting the remainder of the costars? They have such charismatic vitality and there is so many nice newcomers onscreen.
Seligman: We had an unimaginable casting director, Maribeth Fox. It was the primary time I noticed casting like a real artwork kind, as a result of she was like, “Everyone needs to be unique. You can’t just have people playing the roles. Every offering had to have a singularity.”
Sennott: She kept saying “singular,” and we were like, “It’s our new word.”
Seligman: We adopted it. We were looking for people who were grounded in their characters so they could just play it straight. We didn’t want anyone to ham up the jokes — we wanted people to believe their characters and [to] say the ridiculous stuff that they were saying with sincerity. That’s Rachel’s favorite brand of comedy and mine, as well. But that was always just a go-to. It is exciting that they’re newcomers.
Sennott: It’s so thrilling. The first night watching tapes, we were eating sushi, had a glass of wine, and we were like, “Oh, my God, tape night! We’re going to watch the tapes!” Havana [Rose Liu who plays Isabel’s] tape, we screamed. We were like, “That’s Isabel.” The level of commitment when she was sobbing, she was so in it, so funny, and so real. It thrilled us. So many discoveries.
Was there any improv incorporated on-screen? How much improv versus what was on the page ended up being shot?
Seligman: In terms of the balance of improv versus written, Rachel and I definitely [did] both. 50% of [Rachel’s] dialogue was improvised because there were so many moments where we planned like a shot walking down the hall, and didn’t have anything written for it. It ended up becoming Rachel and Ayo figuring it out, doing a dance, and then finding the way back into the scene.
Sennott: [In terms of improvising as a director on set,] it was so impressive to watch Emma. There are so many moving parts. There were on Shiva, but on this we’ve got 300 extras, a mascot with a huge fake penis, the crew was huge, so many changes happened. There was a whole week [when we were] shooting overnight on a football field and every single night there were thunderstorms and lightning. It was so funny because when [that was] happening, I was in the trailer with all the actors doing Truth or Dare.
I’m texting Emma and she was like, “Okay, we have three options. We either move this around, we shoot this in the school tomorrow, but then the turn around will be like this!” Everyone is like, “When was your first kiss?” Emma is like, “We will lose our money tomorrow!” But it was so impressive to watch her adapt and grow into that space. We had changes like that on Shiva, but instead it was like the toilet upstairs won’t flush, everyone has to pee in the backyard.
Emma, was it hard for you behind the lens trying not to break whenever something hysterical happened on-screen?
Seligman: I’m pretty good at keeping it together. However, there were random moments where I couldn’t control it. It was the mascot. Every time we were shooting the mascot with the giant penis, I was covering my mouth so hard. I was smiling every time and I heard the crew laughing, trying to keep it together.
The “Complicated” by Avril Lavinge needle drop, was that all the time within the script? And how was it working with Charli XCX on the rating?
Seligman: We wanted a Y2K sad girl anthem. It was either that or “Come Clean” [by Hilary Duff].
[Then in terms of working with Charli XCX,] the main artist that I listened to on the Bottoms playlist as we were writing was Charli. She had [Rachel] on her podcast and she was a fan of Shiva, after which she was like, “I heard you are doing a brand new film and I’d like to do one thing for it.” She in all probability meant a tune, and I used to be like, “Wanna do the score?”
What is so superb about her, not solely does she have a singular voice, however she will do an emotional [song], she will do enjoyable, she will do thrilling, the whole lot. She additionally occurs to be a queer icon who’s so beloved, is such an unimaginable ally, and helps queer artists a lot. Then [composer] Leo [Birenberg] took her sound and carried out it in every single place. It was a collaboration between the 2.
Given that that is your second characteristic collectively, what’s the largest takeaway that you simply realized from this whole expertise?
Seligman: Work with your pals. I can discuss for hours about all of the little issues the place I’m like, “Won’t do that again. Got it,” however having Rachel and our [Director of Photography] Maria [Rusche], who did Shiva as nicely, was the one manner I may get by it. It was a reminder of why folks work with the identical folks again and again.
Sennott: It was like, “Who do you want to be with at five in the morning when a bomb goes off?” For a lot of school, I felt like I wanted permission to put in writing one thing or make one thing. Emma conjures up me and empowered me in making this film along with her. I do actually really feel like I may do something now and I’m not scared to, as a result of we acquired to make this.
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