Rachel Sennott enters the video call and at once launches into an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, sounding truly apologetic. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she wants to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, during an interview, this is precisely what you want to hear. Moreover, it’s fairly expected. Anyone who know the unapologetically LGBTQ+ and brash movie Bottoms—which Sennott co-wrote with Emma Seligman and appeared in together with collaborator The Bear’s standout—will understand that she holds a lot to discuss, be it about gender, relationships, or the appeal of forming a teen brawl society. Furthermore, after watching the recent multi-episode program I Love LA, it is clear that the star carries even more thoughts on the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott serves as a relatable figure of the gang, straddling eras skilled for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and the actress admits to being enthusiastic, citing the show alongside the HBO hit, Insecure and the innovative program as influences for her series, which details the struggles of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and aspiring representative Sennott’s character. However, the most significant influence on the moodboard belonged to the HBO series, that program focusing on a rising Hollywood star making his way in a gritty Hollywood (notable statement: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it during lockdown, became “obsessed”, and decided 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 inspiration for this project originated—in part—from personal, at first difficult, relocation to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about phenomenon for astrology heads. This represented an era that saw her grasp major insights, professionally and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Starting Out
Growing up in New England, Sennott started writing and performing humor while pursuing theatre at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” 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. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She took matters into her own hands, performing at amateur nights with her friend and posting hysterical (and very) weird online content on the internet. One, Baby Cult, centered on a group of women intensely drawn to having babies; a different one portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as akin to being trapped in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and ultimately starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a religious event with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her career, she explains, has been contemporaries supporting her, instead of traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, continuing amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Career Breakthrough
Anyone who had doubts regarding Sennott then will certainly be kicking themselves now. As part of she labels a “astonishingly complete” story, she appears to manifested an ideal role. Previously she shared a video named about Los Angeles on social media, in which she lampooned film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a comedy about city dwellers juggling the perks of digital stardom (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being labeled as being a drug-addled stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). One might easy to produce a show about digital influence that was horribly idealized—or, more problematic, one that belittled at the characters. I Love LA steers clear of each, creating a depiction of privileged young adult life that’s candid about the mess and the glamour.
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
