New Girls’ club
(NBC)
By Sofia Reecer
Less than a month after sweeping the January awards season and winning her first Emmy, Golden Globe, and Critics’ Choice Awards for her performance as Sydney Adamu in The Bear, Ayo Edebiri walked onstage in 30 Rockefeller Plaza’s Studio 8H to host Saturday Night Live. Much like with her acceptance speeches, where she thanked “my family, my family, my family,” and called out her parents in the audience “for loving me and letting me feel beautiful and Black and proud of all of that,” Edebiri’s monologue dripped with emotion and gratitude. “SNL means so much to me,” she beamed, her voice breaking, “this really is a dream come true.”
Edebiri is one of the most dedicated, motivated, and promising actresses working today. To many, her rise to fame has seemed sudden, as if she simply came out of nowhere. In truth, though, Edebiri has been around for a while now. Her credits leading up to her recent wins are extensive, both on and off camera, and they mark the emergence of a very talented, very inspiring new generation of women in film and comedy.
A 2017 graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts who switched out of the university’s Education Department to study dramatic writing, Edebiri’s rise to success has been the result of years of hard work, a little luck, and collaborating with the right people. Her trajectory has been closely intertwined with those of three other women actively making names for themselves, all of whom can also be traced back to their time at NYU. They are: Emma Seligman, Rachel Sennott, and Molly Gordon.
L to R: Emma Seligman, Rachel Sennott, Bodies Bodies Bodies actress Chase Sui Wonders, Ayo Edebiri, Molly Gordon (Gilbert Flores/Getty Images)
Seligman, writer and director of 2020’s Shiva Baby and last summer’s Bottoms, was in Edebiri’s graduating class at Tisch. But it was Sennott (Shiva Baby, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Bottoms) who Edebiri met first, through acting together in another student’s comedy sketch. They became friends, and for the rest of their time at school encouraged each other to try their hands at open mic nights and other standup opportunities, working their way up in the downtown comedy scene. Gordon, who grew up immersed in theater with childhood friends Ben Platt and Beanie Feldstein, started NYU the same year as Edebiri and Seligman, but left after only two weeks to pursue acting on her own time. Her path, though, would go on to cross over and over again with the classmates she left behind.
Like Edebiri, Seligman met Sennott first at NYU. A film major, Seligman made the short-film Shiva Baby for her thesis at Tisch. She auditioned drama students for the project, and cast Sennott, a student in the year below her, as her lead. Seligman told the New Yorker that Sennott’s drive was a huge part of what drew her to the actress. She said, “she carried around monthly, one-year, and three-year goals in her backpack, printed out. They helped remind her of what she was working toward.” This contagious ambition would serve them well. While making the Shiva Baby short, the two developed the idea for Bottoms, the camp, lesbian fight-club movie released in theaters last summer. For the rest of their time at NYU, they met regularly at a West Village café and worked on the screenplay for hours. Sennott helped keep the pair motivated and on track with their writing goals, and when it came time to brainstorm potential actresses, she already had a costar in mind, a friend of hers from NYU’s comedy circles: Ayo Edebiri.
Edebiri, Seligman, and Sennott on the Bottoms set (Patti Perret)
A lot, of course, would happen before Bottoms—which was shopped around for years before the young women got producers on board—finally made its theater debut, putting Seligman, Sennott, and Edebiri firmly on mainstream Hollywood’s radar. First, Shiva Baby would be expanded, rewritten, recast (save for Sennott as Danielle), and turned into Seligman’s first feature. The plot became more complex, and more queer. Gordon, starting to make a name for herself with smaller roles in other films, took Sennott’s side in the supporting role of Maya, Danielle’s ex-girlfriend. Their performances complimented each other perfectly: smart, sometimes painfully tense comedy with just the right amount of heart. Shiva Baby was made quietly, discreetly, shot over 16 days in a Brooklyn Airbnb. But when it was released to streaming in the thick of COVID-19, it blew up, creating a reputation for these women’s work that would ultimately help Seligman and Sennott get a green light for Bottoms, and help Gordon move on to bigger screen roles before making her own directorial debut with 2023’s Theater Camp.
Gordon, Seligman, and Sennott pose on set with the Shiva Baby cast (Letterboxd on X)
All the while, Edebiri was making similarly quiet, but always deliberate, moves. Unlike the other women, she had not started at NYU knowing she wanted to end up in film. Before switching into Tisch, she was planning to become an English teacher. And unlike Gordon, whose parents are producers and directors, she did not have industry connections to fall back on. But what she did have—what all of these women have—is talent, commitment to her craft, and drive. Immediately after graduating from NYU, Edebiri began work as a production assistant for Broad City. She went on to earn her way into writers rooms, continuing to work on her own comedy while producing for other shows. In more cases than one, the quality of her work behind the scenes led to her being put in front of the camera. Starting in 2020, she worked as a staff writer and consulting producer on Big Mouth, where she eventually took over the voice of Missy after Jenny Slate stepped down. Also in 2020, she and Sennott worked on a series of shorts for Comedy Central, called Ayo and Rachel are Single, which garnered hundreds of thousands of views. In 2021, she began working as a staff writer on AppleTV’s Dickinson, and soon after secured a recurring role in the show’s second season. And in 2022, she began to draw public attention for her work as Sydney in FX’s The Bear, finally bringing to a main, breakout role her perfectly awkward comedy with—like Sennott and Gordon—just the right amount of heart.
Edebiri and Sennott in their web series Ayo and Rachel are Single (Comedy Central)
It is a web of origin stories fit for a movie plot, one that maybe someday they’ll write. They call to mind young, ambitious Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, shopping the Good Will Hunting script around, insisting they would only sell it if they could also star in it. But this is a refreshing new take on that story. Edebiri, Seligman, Sennott, and Gordon are women sharing queer and diverse narratives, making a name for themselves, supporting each other as they move up. The Ringer credits them with creating the “Zilennial Cult Comedy Cinematic Universe.”
For years now, these four women have worked tirelessly to put themselves on the map—and it’s finally paying off for all of them. Seligman has two features to her name six years out of college, with no intention of slowing down. Sennott secured her status as a face, if not the face, of Gen Z satirical comedy with her role as Alice in 2022’s Bodies Bodies Bodies— with lines like “Don’t call her a psychopath! It’s so ableist,”—further cemented by her performance alongside Edebiri in the very weird, very queer Bottoms. Gordon has been racking up credits of her own, and last year joined Edebiri in the second season of The Bear, playing Jeremy Allen White’s love interest. Also last year, she co-wrote, co-directed, and co-starred in Theater Camp, a nostalgic nod to her theater kid past, in which she cast Edebiri—Edebiri, who is now a Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice, and Emmy Award winner.
Gordon and Edebiri on set for The Bear (Cinema Solace on X)
When Edebiri accepted her Emmy on January 15th, her third award of the season, she seemed to be in disbelief. Standing at the podium, she gripped the small statue hard, eyes wide, her voice shaking as she spoke.
On SNL though, Edebiri’s demeanor was different. This time, she stood a little taller, smiled a little bigger. Maybe it’s the few weeks she’s had to let it all sink in. Edebiri introduced herself by talking about her Boston upbringing, her family, her African and Caribbean roots. She read from a packet she put together in her standup comic days, one she never got up the nerve to send to SNL. And as she wrapped up, her voice breaking once more, she said, “I came up in the New York Comedy scene with some of my best friends who I am so blessed to be working with here tonight, and it really, truly feels like a homecoming.” It was a perfect monologue, a tribute to where she’s been—
Because she did not come out of nowhere.
