Rachel Sennott enters the digital interview and right away starts an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, appearing truly regretful. She is only a bit delayed, she needs to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Fortunately, in this context, that’s precisely what you want to experience. Moreover, it’s fairly expected. Anyone who know her fearlessly queer and unapologetically crass movie titled Bottoms—that Sennott penned with her creative partner and featured in together with her friend The Bear’s standout—will already know that she holds much to discuss, be it about identity, sex, or the pros of starting a high-school brawl society. Plus, by the end the latest eight-part HBO series I Love LA, it is clear that she carries further insights regarding the struggles of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott serves as a relatable figure to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial adept for straddling different age groups).
Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott admits to being an admirer, referencing it together with Sex and the City, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as influences for I Love LA, which follows the journey of a social media star Tallulah and ally who is also fledgling representative Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the biggest influence on concept belonged to the popular sitcom, that HBO sitcom focusing on an up-and-coming A-list actor succeeding in a gritty Hollywood (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it during COVID-19, became “hooked”, and chose to add a fresh perspective on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she notes. The idea for the series originated—in part—from personal, at first difficult, transition to Los Angeles and from the cosmic event, a much-talked-about event for enthusiasts. It was an era that saw her learn significant insights, work-wise and personally. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Early Beginnings
Raised in Connecticut, the star commenced developing and showcasing comedy while studying theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she states. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at live shows with her friend and posting hilarious (and very) unconventional online content on the internet. One, Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically drawn to motherhood; another envisioned being employed at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being caught in a horror film. By chance, she encountered Seligman through campus film circles and ended up starring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a Jewish wake with hints of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her career, she explains, has been contemporaries supporting her, instead of established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, adding with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who questioned regarding her then will surely be kicking themselves currently. As part of she describes as a “astonishingly complete” development, she has manifested an ideal role. Previously she uploaded content named on LA life on social media, in which she mocked film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about Angelenos balancing advantages of digital stardom (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your client being suspected of being a substance-abusing criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable outcast). It would be simple to make a series about internet celebrity that was horribly glamorous—or, worse, one that punched down at those depicted. This show avoids both, making for a portrait of advantaged millennial life that’s candid about the grot and the shine.
Balanced Perspective
“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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
