Emma Seligman’s Filmography: A Look at Bottoms and Shiva Baby

The second picture in Emma Seligman’s filmography is a gloomy comedy called Bottoms, which debuted at the South by Southwest Picture Festival this year. In 2020, the Canadian director made her debut in the film industry with the release of her debut feature film, Shiva Baby. The film was also selected for screening at the SXSW Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival that same year, receiving a largely favorable response from both audiences and reviewers. Seligman poured a significant amount of herself into the narrative and the main character, Danielle (played by Rachel Sennott), originally adapted from her short film 2018 and ran for only seven minutes. The film Shiva Baby, whose protagonist is Jewish and bisexual, was hailed by critics and audiences alike as a film that is invigorating, complex, and engaging and that offers positive and original cultural portrayals.

Bottoms: A Campy Queer High School Comedy

Shortly after the film’s success, Seligman secured a deal with HBO to produce a television series with the working title Sugar. The series will center on a young woman in New York who is employed as a sugar baby. Seligman will serve as the writer, director, and executive producer of the series’s pilot episode, which will use aspects of the tale from Shiva Baby. Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up) will join him in these roles. Her career is headed in the right direction, especially considering Bottoms will be released this year. The location of the movie is a typical American high school. Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri (The Bear), who play the roles of the two gay female characters, take the spotlight in this show. In anticipation of the next film that Emma Seligman will direct, the following guide includes everything we know about Bottoms.

Bottoms Cast

• Rachel Sennott as PJ

• Ayo Edebiri as Josie

• Havana Rose Liu as Isabel

• Kaia Gerber as Brittany

• Nicholas Galitzine as Jeff

• Dagmara Domińczyk as Mrs. Callahan

• Marshawn Lynch as Mr. G

• Ruby Cruz as Hazel Callahan

• Miles Fowler as Tim

• Punkie Johnson

• Wayne Péré as Principal Meyers

• Lacey Dover as Cheerleader

• Alyssa Matthews as Fight Club

• Krystal Chambers as Fight Club Girl

• Summer Joy Campbell as Sylvie

• Hunter Prestenback as Chambliss

Release Date of Bottoms

The world premiere of Bottoms took place on March 11th, 2023, at South by Southwest. It is scheduled for a limited theatrical release in the United States on August 25th, 2023, by Orion Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, before expanding on September 1st, 2023.

Emma Seligman: Director of Bottoms

Emma Seligman is a Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter who rose to prominence with the release of their first feature-length directorial effort, Shiva Baby (2020). In their second feature film, Bottoms, Seligman and Rachel Sennott, who played the lead role in Shiva Baby, collaborated once more. Bottoms was the opening night film at the SXSW film festival on March 11th, 2023.

Bottoms: A Campy Queer High School Comedy

After the success of Seligman’s first feature film as director, she had already planned her next feature film, in which she and Sennott will collaborate again as the film’s main character and writer. She described it as a “campy queer high school comedy in the vein of Wet Hot American Summer but more for a Gen-Z queer audience.” She compared it to the movie “Wet Hot American Summer.” It is still uncommon in the film industry to see comedies about female protagonists coming of age that tackle vulgar or explicit subject matter on Superbad or American Pie levels. To add insult to injury, it’s even rarer to see gay leads in these kinds of movies, which highlights Seligman’s devotion to integrating LGBTQ+ characters like those in her last work. In recent years, successful movies such as Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart and Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird have portrayed these narratives and demonstrated the importance, relevance, and worth of accurately expressing female adolescence within the medium of film. Bottoms is a movie that shows a lot of promise for broadening the scope of these wild and aggressive comedies focused on women. The following is how the official synopsis reads:

In their senior year, two unpopular gay ladies create a fight club hoping to impress cheerleaders and possibly hooking up with them.

During an interview in September of 2022, Sennott provided the following further description of the film:

Under the pretense of promoting female empowerment, two young women in a town synonymous with American football established a fight club. However, the real reason for this is so that they can have sexual encounters with cheerleaders.