Rachel Sennott enters the online meeting and at once launches into an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, seeming genuinely remorseful. Despite being only a bit late, she wants to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, in this context, this is precisely what one hopes to experience. Moreover, it’s pretty unsurprising. Those familiar with her fearlessly LGBTQ+ and brash project Bottoms—that she collaborated on with Emma Seligman and featured in together with collaborator The Bear’s standout—can be aware that Sennott has a lot to discuss, whether about roles, sex, or the pros of starting a youth fight club. And, after watching the new seasonal show I Love LA, it is clear that the star has additional insights on the struggles of young adulthood (At 30, she represents a relatable figure to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial with a knack for connecting different age groups).
Guiding Lights and Creative Vision
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and the actress readily acknowledges a fan, citing it together with Sex and the City, Insecure and the innovative program as influences for the project, which tracks the struggles of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also new talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the biggest influence on creative vision belonged to the HBO series, the HBO sitcom focusing on an emerging Hollywood star succeeding in a corrupt entertainment industry (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it throughout COVID-19, became “hooked”, and resolved to create a new version on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The inspiration for I Love LA originated—to some extent—from personal, at first rocky, transition to Los Angeles and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed phenomenon for astrology heads. It was a phase that included her grasp some big life lessons, in her career and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she recalls. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Starting Out
Growing up in Connecticut, Sennott began developing and showcasing humor while enrolled in performance at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she explains. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She took matters into her own hands, performing at open mics with Ayo and uploading hilarious (and very) weird comedy videos digitally. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed a group of women obsessively drawn to pregnancy; a different one imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being stuck in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and ended up featuring in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a religious event with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her path, she explains, has been people her own age giving her a shot, rather than traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, continuing humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who had doubts regarding her previously will surely be regretting it now. As part of she describes as a “incredibly circular” story, she appears to created the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded a video named on LA life online, in which she parodied film promos (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos juggling advantages of internet fame (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your associate being labeled as being a substance-abusing stealer, and possibly becoming a risky persona non grata). It would be easy to make a show about digital influence that was extremely glamorous—or, more problematic, one that punched down at the characters. The series does neither, making for a portrait of advantaged millennial existence that’s candid about the grot and the shine.
Nuanced Portrayal
“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
