JUST ROOMMATES
A sapphic sitcom about a 'baby gay' from Kansas, who must learn to navigate the complicated and exciting lives of lesbians in the city.
8-Episode Comedy
FORMAT
Los Angeles, CA
SETTING
Springfield, MO
FILMED IN
Mak Ingemi
DIRECTOR / WRITER
Fall 2026
PILOT PRODUCTION
Mak Ingemi directing her debut short film
A queer sitcom about friendship, identity, and chosen family in Los Angeles, where a group of lesbians learn that growing up is optional but growing together is not.
SYNOPSIS
Just Roommates follows Quinn, a "baby gay" newly arrived from Kansas, as she learns to navigate the complicated and exciting lives of lesbians in Los Angeles. The show discovers this new world in stride with the audience — no prior knowledge of the scene required.
The series sets out to tell sapphic stories without centering suffering. It's lightly inspired by events from writer-director Mak Ingemi's own life, offering a break from the realities many queer people face, without erasing them.
“Let’s be honest, lesbians being hot has carried representation for long enough. The reality is, lesbians are funny. Genuinely funny. Our lives are chaotic, specific, and deeply entertaining in ways that have barely been explored on screen. We carry around fake d**** in backpacks. Our exes and current partners somehow overlap. We fall in love fast, move in faster, and build entire ecosystems out of friendship, resilience, and shared experience.”
LEAD CHARACTER
QUINN
A "baby gay" from Kansas navigating the complicated and exciting lives of lesbians in the city for the first time. Quinn learns the unwritten rules of queer LA in real time — and so does the audience, right alongside her.
Read the full press kit for mak ingemi’s directorial debut
PRESS KIT
Mak explains JUST ROOMMATES
Just Roommates is what happens if Friends, New Girl, and The L Word had a chaotic gay little lovechild.
Let’s be honest, lesbians being hot has carried representation for long enough. The reality is, lesbians are funny. Genuinely funny. Our lives are chaotic, specific, and deeply entertaining in ways that have barely been explored on screen. We carry around fake d**** in backpacks. Our exes and current partners somehow overlap. We fall in love fast, move in faster, and build entire ecosystems out of friendship, resilience, and shared experience.
Just Roommates taps into that world.
The series follows a naive pastor’s daughter whose life has just blown up as she is thrown into a Los Angeles loft with three wildly different queer women. What unfolds is a story about identity, friendship, and finding your footing, told through humor, warmth, and the kind of lived in dynamics that make sitcoms timeless.
This is New Girl with queer women.
This is Friends in Los Angeles, but the group chat is gay.
TONE, STRUCTURE, AND STYLE
Just Roommates is a character driven sitcom rooted in humor, comfort, and relatability. While many queer stories lean heavy or tragic, this series intentionally creates space for joy, absurdity, and everyday life.
The tone is lighthearted and fast paced, grounded in comedic dynamics and sharp, personality driven writing. It is a show you can come home to, where being queer is not the conflict, it is just the world.
WHY THIS STORY MATTERS
For a lot of queer women representation has historically meant tragedy, invisibility, or distortion. Stories either center suffering or reduce queer characters to side plots in someone else’s narrative.
Just Roommates exists to change that experience.
This show is for the version of me who grew up in the Midwest and could not find herself anywhere on screen. It is for the people who do not want another story about surviving being queer, but instead want a story about living while being queer.
It is a reminder that joy is not something we earn after hardship. It is something we are allowed to have now.
WHY THIS PROJECT, WHY NOW
This project comes from lived experience, not trend.
Mak built a decade long audience by sharing her own coming out journey online, creating a space where queer people could feel seen in real time, not just in hindsight. That connection is the foundation of this series.
Pool Girl Studios was built specifically to tell stories like this. Stories led by women, driven by queer voices, and grounded in authenticity rather than industry formulas.
Together with a team that includes established producers, creators with viral cultural reach, and a network of experienced collaborators, Just Roommates is not just an idea. It is a production ready project with both creative vision and execution behind it.
This is not about waiting for permission from traditional networks. It is about building the stories we know audiences are already asking for.
