Rachel Sennott appears on the video call and right away starts an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, appearing truly regretful. She is only slightly delayed, she wants to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, for a writer, this is exactly what you want to hear. Besides, it’s fairly unsurprising. Those familiar with her fearlessly openly gay and brash film Bottoms—which she co-wrote with the director and featured in alongside collaborator The Bear’s standout—will already know that she possesses a lot to say, ranging from on identity, relationships, or the pros of forming a youth fight club. And, by the end the new eight-part HBO series titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star carries further insights on the darker side of modern youth (Now in her thirties, Sennott serves as an honorary member of the gang, on the cusp skilled for connecting different age groups).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, citing the show together with the classic series, Insecure and Atlanta as influences for the project, which follows the journey of an influencer Tallulah and her friend who is also new representative Maia. Notably, the biggest presence on creative vision was reserved for Entourage, the program depicting an emerging A-list actor navigating in a corrupt Hollywood (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it amid lockdown, became “captivated”, and chose 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 says. The concept for I Love LA came—to some extent—from her own, originally fractious, relocation to Los Angeles and from the cosmic event, a popular event for followers. It was a phase that included her grasp some big insights, work-wise and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Humble Origins
Growing up in the East Coast, the star started writing and performing humor while pursuing theatre 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. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She decided to act independently, taking the stage at live shows with her friend and sharing hilarious (and very) unconventional skits online. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on a group of women obsessively obsessed with having babies; another envisioned being employed at the brand Hollister as like being stuck in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Emma through the university’s film scene and ultimately starring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a Jewish wake with shades of the intense thriller. The big theme of her path, she explains, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, stating with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Career Breakthrough
Those who had doubts about her then will certainly be feeling foolish currently. As part of she calls a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she has manifested the perfect project. A few years back she uploaded content titled about Los Angeles on social media, in which she parodied film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a show about city dwellers balancing benefits of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your client being accused of being a intoxicated stealer, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). It would be simple to make a show about online fame that was horribly glamorous—or, worse, one that punched down at its subjects. This show does neither, creating a representation of privileged twentysomething life that’s frank about the mess and the appeal.
Nuanced Portrayal
“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” she says. “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
