
Source: Ian Maule / Getty
If there’s one NFL player you expected to live their best life after retiring, it’s gotta be Marshawn Lynch.
Lynch has gone on to star in a bevy of shows –including one that
simulated life on Mars— but he’s making his way in Hollywood now.
The Super Bowl champ’s latest project is the raunchy high school comedy
Bottoms which follows two young women, played by Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott, on a quest to lose their virginity.
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Of course, nothing goes as planned, and hilarity ensues. On their journey for sex, Lynch’s character, a teacher named Mr. G, pops up and helps them start an extracurricular activity with the hopes of getting closer to their crushes.
What makes this a twist on the average partying teen flick is that Edebiri and Sennott play lesbians. And with Lynch’s sister identifying as gay, he saw this as a chance for redemption because he admittedly didn’t have the best reaction when she came out to him two decades ago.
Director Emma Seligman spoke to
GQ about convincing
Beast Mode to take on the role and how his sister’s sexuality played a role.
“So, 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. He felt like this movie coming into his hands was the universe giving him a chance to right his wrongs,” she explains. “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!”
In a separate interview, Lynch explained Seligman’s original comments and righting his uneducated wrongs with his sister in mind.
“This was a good opportunity for me because when I was in high school, my sister had came out as being a lesbian. I did not handle it right,” Lynch said. “As a 16-year-old boy, I didn’t handle it the way that I feel I probably should have. So, I told her it was giving me an opportunity to correct my wrongs. To rewrite one of my mistakes.
“
Per usual, social media is saluting Lynch for his authenticity. See the reactions below.