Rachel Sennott enters the digital interview and immediately starts an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, seeming genuinely remorseful. Although she's only a bit behind, she wants to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, in this context, that’s just what is ideal to encounter. Besides, it’s pretty predictable. Viewers familiar with the boldly queer and outspoken movie Bottoms—that Sennott collaborated on with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside her friend Ayo Edebiri—would be aware that Sennott possesses plenty to say, be it about gender, intimacy, or the pros of creating a high-school combat group. Furthermore, by the end her recent multi-episode HBO series I Love LA, viewers realize that the star holds further insights regarding the challenges of Gen Z life (Now in her thirties, she serves as a relatable figure for this generation, straddling eras with a knack for connecting different age groups).
Influences and Storytelling Approach
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and the actress readily acknowledges enthusiastic, referencing it in addition to the HBO hit, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for the project, which tracks the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion who is also fledgling representative portrayed by Sennott. However, the biggest spot on concept belonged to the popular sitcom, that program focusing on a rising celebrity making his way in an often-seedy entertainment industry (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott discovered it during lockdown, became “obsessed”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The inspiration for this project came—to some extent—from firsthand, at first rocky, relocation to LA and from the astrological phase, a frequently discussed phenomenon for enthusiasts. That period marked an era that saw her understand major truths, professionally and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Humble Origins
Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott began writing and performing humor while enrolled in performance at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” 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 seized control, taking the stage at amateur nights with Ayo and sharing hilarious (and very) unconventional skits online. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females obsessively obsessed with motherhood; a different one imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being caught in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she met Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ended up starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of the intense thriller. The central motif of her path, she explains, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, rather than the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she repeats, stating humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Career Breakthrough
Anyone who questioned about her earlier will likely be feeling foolish today. Through she describes as a “astonishingly complete” development, she appears to achieved her dream vehicle. In 2019 she shared a clip named on LA life on the internet, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a series about city dwellers juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your friend being labeled as being a substance-abusing stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). One might easy to create a program about digital influence that was extremely aspirational—or, more problematic, one that belittled at the characters. I Love LA avoids both, resulting in a representation of advantaged twentysomething existence that’s honest about the grot and the glamour.
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
