NFL star Marshawn Lynch took his role in “Bottoms” to make amends to his lesbian sister

Marshawn Lynch’s lesbian sister was a major reason he joined the cast of queer teen comedy Bottoms.

The former NFL star has garnered critical praise for his role as Mr. G, a clueless but supportive substitute teacher tapped by out high schoolers PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) to be the advisor for their all-female “self-defense club”—in reality a ruse for them to meet girls and get lucky.

Related:

LGBTQ+ icons are going to dominate your television screens this fall

Four highly anticipated films on these trailblazers will be released in the coming months.

But as out director Emma Seligman, who co-wrote the film with Sennott, told GQ recently, despite having appeared in episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Westworld, and Murderville, as well as in 80 for Brady, Lynch was at first hesitant to sign on to play Mr. G.

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.

Daily

Weekly

Good News

“It took a few conversations for him to feel comfortable. In our first conversation, he told me that his sister is queer and when they were in high school, he didn’t necessarily handle it super well,” Seligman said. “He felt like this movie coming into his hands was the universe giving him a chance to right his wrongs. That’s what he said. He walked her down the aisle. He felt like they were all good, you know? But his sister thought it’d be really cool if he did this. We had a couple more conversations about it, and eventually he said yes!”

“From the beginning when he read the script, he said that I came to mind,” Lynch’s sister, Marreesha Sapp-Lynch told People. “I was like, ‘Most definitely you should do it.’ I just told him, ‘It’ll get you to understand, get more knowledge about the lesbian community.’”

While Lynch himself is unable to discuss the film due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, Sapp-Lynch elaborated further on his reaction to her coming out in high school.

“Marshawn had a lot of questions and was thinking it was his fault,” she told People. “Because growing up he would always say I couldn’t have a boyfriend, ‘You can’t talk to boys.’ We’d go to a party and he’d be asking everybody, ‘Did you dance with my sister?’ But I wasn’t attracted to boys, so I didn’t dance with them!”

Seligman said that during the film’s shoot, Lynch talked about his sister a lot. When Sapp-Lynch and her wife visited the set, Seligman said, “He kept on being like, ‘That’s my sister.’ In a way where it was like a proud parent — a proud brother.”

Since its premiere, Bottoms has garnered acclaim for putting young queer women at the center of a raunchy teen sex comedy. Sapp-Lynch told People that seeing a film like Bottoms at a formative age “would’ve helped me make me feel easier, make me feel better about me being who I am.”