Rachel Sennott enters the video call and at once begins an explanation. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, seeming truly regretful. She is only a bit late, she feels compelled to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, for a writer, this is precisely what one hopes to experience. Moreover, it’s pretty unsurprising. Those who have seen her fearlessly queer and brash project Bottoms—which Sennott collaborated on with Emma Seligman and starred in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—will understand that she has plenty to share, whether on gender, relationships, or the appeal of forming a high-school brawl society. Plus, by the end her new eight-part HBO series titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star holds additional insights about the darker side of modern youth (As a millennial, she represents an honorary member to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial with a knack for bridging different age groups).
Inspirations and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress is an admirer, referencing it in addition to the HBO hit, Insecure and the innovative program as inspirations for I Love LA, which details the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also new agent Maia. However, the most significant influence on concept belonged to the HBO series, that HBO sitcom depicting an emerging celebrity succeeding in a corrupt LA scene (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it throughout lockdown, became “captivated”, and resolved to create a new version on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she notes. The idea for this project emerged—in part—from personal, at first rocky, move to Tinseltown and from the cosmic event, a frequently discussed occurrence for astrology heads. This represented an era that involved her grasp major truths, work-wise and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Starting Out
Raised in the East Coast, the star started writing and performing humor while enrolled in performance at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she says. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, appearing at live shows with Ayo and posting hysterical (and very) bizarre comedy videos digitally. One, Baby Cult, depicted characters intensely fixated on motherhood; a different one envisioned working at the brand Hollister as similar to being stuck in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Seligman through campus film circles and eventually appearing in her initial project, Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a funeral gathering with shades of the intense thriller. The central motif of her career, she notes, has been people her own age offering opportunities, rather than traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, stating humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Career Breakthrough
Those who questioned regarding her earlier will surely be kicking themselves today. In what she describes as a “incredibly circular” story, she has achieved her dream vehicle. A few years back she uploaded a video named “it’s LA” online, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos balancing advantages of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with drawbacks (your client being suspected of being a intoxicated thief, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). One might simple to produce a program about online fame that was horribly glamorous—or, worse, one that mocked at its subjects. The series avoids both, resulting in a representation of advantaged millennial living that’s candid about the chaos and the appeal.
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 observes. “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
