Rachel Sennott joins the digital interview and immediately begins an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, appearing really remorseful. Although she's only slightly delayed, she feels compelled to justify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, for a writer, this is precisely what one hopes to hear. Moreover, it’s pretty expected. Viewers who know her fearlessly queer and outspoken project Bottoms—that she collaborated on with Emma Seligman and featured in with close companion Ayo Edebiri—would already know that Sennott holds a lot to discuss, ranging from about identity, relationships, or the merits of starting a high-school combat group. Furthermore, once you finish her new multi-episode HBO series titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star holds additional perspectives about the struggles of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott represents a relatable figure for this generation, on the cusp with a knack for connecting millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Artistic Direction
Likenesses to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and the actress readily acknowledges a fan, referencing it in addition to Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and the innovative program as guides for I Love LA, which details the travails of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also new talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the biggest influence on concept belonged to the HBO series, the show about an emerging A-list actor succeeding in a gritty Hollywood (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it amid COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and chose to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she notes. The idea for I Love LA came—to some extent—from personal, at first rocky, relocation to Los Angeles and from the cosmic event, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. That period marked a time that saw her learn major insights, professionally and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Starting Out
Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott started writing and performing stand-up while pursuing theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, performing at amateur nights with Ayo and sharing hilarious (and decidedly) unconventional online content digitally. One, Baby Cult, followed several females intensely fixated on pregnancy; another imagined being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being trapped in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she met Seligman through campus film circles and eventually appearing in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful comedy set at a religious event with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her path, she notes, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, continuing with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Rising Success
Anyone who had doubts regarding her then will certainly be kicking themselves currently. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” development, she has created the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded a video titled about Los Angeles online, in which she parodied film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a series about LA residents balancing benefits of digital stardom (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being labeled as being a drug-addled thief, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). Some could tempting to produce a program about online fame that was overly glamorous—or, worse, one that mocked at those depicted. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a portrait of privileged young adult living that’s candid about the chaos and the shine.
Empathetic Approach
“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” she comments. “I think that young people have been through a lot – I’m mostly thinking of people younger than me, like my little sister, who went to college during Covid, so she had to come home, or my other sister who was doing school online.”|“The younger generation has faced significant
