Shrimp is a 2018 short comedy-drama written and directed by Zelda Williams. Conor Leslie, Paulina Singer, and Williams star as dominatrices working in a Los Angeles BDSM house; the title is house slang for the male clients who pay to be shrunk, in status if not in body, under professional Domme control. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on 22 September 2018. Afterward Gunpowder & Sky bought rights to develop it as a series—Hollywood’s recurring fantasy that pro-domme workplace comedy can sustain long-form TV. For viewers who want session work treated as labor and sisterhood rather than pure male POV fantasy, Shrimp is a compact, consent-aware door into that genre.
Plot
Dominatrices Sasha, Jess, and Angelina work under head mistress Marie. Their job is pain and humiliation delivered to male clients on a professional clock. Personality splits are clean: Jess is a free-spirited exhibitionist; Angelina is married to a client; Sasha has avoided romance because of the work. Marie, wanting to shift Sasha’s isolation, sets up a blind date she describes as a friend’s son. After shift, Sasha meets Daniel at a bar; Jess has a restroom tryst with a young woman; Angelina shares a private romantic evening with her husband. Sasha and Daniel stay until closing, move to a park, and fall asleep together on a bench.
Morning brings workplace violence: a client attacks Angelina; Sasha intervenes and saves her. Marie praises Sasha and asks her to leave the den with her when they close. Outside they run into Daniel—revealed as Marie’s son. The romantic setup collapses into awkward silence; Sasha is left without a clean line. The short ends on that professional-personal collision rather than a bow-tied romance.
Cast
- Conor Leslie — Sasha
- Zelda Williams — Jess
- Paulina Singer — Angelina
- Frances Fisher — Marie
- Jake Abel — Daniel
- Jacob Zachar — Angelina’s husband
- Danielle Campbell — Jess’s date
Taika Waititi appears as a bartender. Co-producer Joshua Thurston plays Marie’s client, credited as the horse gimp. Sasha Lane has an uncredited turn as one of the dominatrices. That supporting bench—Waititi cameo, Fisher as house mother, explicit gimp client—signals both indie comedy pedigree and willingness to show session aesthetics without flinching.
Production and Intent
Williams has said the spark was personal and almost accidental: a man in a bar mistook her for a dominatrix. Looking into a local BDSM house, she found a world unlike most fictional portrayals—“incredibly understanding,” “non-judgmental,” and built “on consent and openness.” That research stance shows in the short’s workplace framing: Dommes as colleagues with different off-duty lives, not as pure male fantasy avatars. Micro-short runtime forces economy; character beats carry more weight than long scene demo reels.
Series Development
Post-Tribeca, Williams struck a November 2018 deal with Gunpowder & Sky to expand Shrimp into a half-hour series. CEO Van Toffler said the company was drawn to how Williams “was able to take a generally taboo topic, turn it on its head and tap into the day-to-day happenings of the dominatrix community and tell their story in an authentic way.” Whether or not the series fully materializes in later seasons of industry limbo, the purchase itself marks studio interest in pro-Domme ensemble storytelling sold as authenticity rather than pure exploitation.
For BDSM media watchers, Shrimp is a small but sharp entry: LA house hierarchy, client risk, off-shift queer and straight desire, and the joke-that-isn’t when your blind date is the head mistress’s son. It will not replace documentary work on sex labor, but as narrative short cinema it treats the dungeon as a workplace with doors, gossip, and danger—and it puts the word “shrimp” back in circulation as Domme-side slang rather than only food or kink micro-genre trivia.
