Bottoms Interview: Emma Seligman on Working with Rachel Sennott & Ayo Edebiri

It’s been far too long since we’ve seen a movie like Bottoms — and in some respects, we’ve never seen anything quite like it. Sure, we’ve seen some recent high school comedies that venture into ranch territory, but Bottoms jumps feet first into that zone without even an ounce of hesitation, and once there, delivers non-stop hilarity while also deconstructing the high school comedy classic and highlighting what the formula’s been missing (and often getting wrong) all these years.

Emma Seligman's sophomore feature reunites her with Shiva Baby's Rachel Sennott who stars in Bottoms and also co-wrote the screenplay alongside Seligman. Sennott headlines Bottoms with The Bear breakout Ayo Edebiri playing PJ and Josie respectively, the “ugly, untalented gays” of Rockbridge Falls High School. Eager to get with the girls of their dreams, PJ and Josie start a new school club — a fight club. What begins as an extremely bold move to get cheerleaders to notice them turns into a community that gives school outcasts a sense of belonging and ignites a ferocious fire to stand up for themselves.

Bottoms is an Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott movie. There’s no other creative duo who could have brought this concept to screen quite this way, and the folks at Brownstone Productions and Orion Pictures knew it. With Bottoms now playing in theater nationwide, Seligman joined me for a Collider Ladies Night interview to recap her journey in the industry thus far and to discuss how she found the perfect creative partners for the film, ones who believed in her vision and her ability to execute it her way.

Hear all about it on this edition of Collider Ladies Night!

Listen to this conversation uncut in podcast form here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3phX...

#bottoms #interview #filmmaking

00:00 Dicey Questions
02:45 Introduction
03:05 Wanting to Become a Film Critic
05:00 Studying at NYU
06:52 Fighting for Her Bottoms DP
08:14 Meeting Rachel Sennott
09:29 Going from Shiva Baby to Bottoms
11:05 Bottoms: Getting the Green Light
13:03 Rachel Sennott & Ayo Edebiri
15:22 Casting the Bottoms Ensemble
16:44 Rooting for Characters Who Are Assholes
18:50 First Cut vs. Final Feature
20:19 Bottoms Deleted Scene
21:24 Test Screening Response
24:41 The Final Shot of Bottoms