Rachel Sennott appears on the online meeting and at once begins an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, seeming really apologetic. Although she's only a couple of minutes late, she needs to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, during an interview, this is just what one hopes to experience. Besides, it’s pretty predictable. Viewers who have seen her boldly queer and outspoken film Bottoms—which she penned with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside collaborator The Bear’s standout—can understand that Sennott has much to say, ranging from on identity, intimacy, or the pros of forming a teen fight club. Plus, once you finish her latest multi-episode HBO series titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star holds even more perspectives about the darker side of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott is a bridge to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial adept for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Influences and Creative Vision
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and the actress admits to being an admirer, citing it in addition to the classic series, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for the project, which details the struggles of a social media star Tallulah and ally and fledgling talent manager portrayed by Sennott. Notably, the most significant influence on the moodboard went to the HBO series, the HBO sitcom focusing on an up-and-coming A-list actor navigating in an often-seedy entertainment industry (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it throughout COVID-19, became “captivated”, and chose to put her own twist 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 idea for I Love LA originated—to some extent—from firsthand, at first fractious, relocation to LA and from the saturn return, a frequently discussed occurrence for astrology heads. It was a phase that included her understand major life lessons, in her career and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Starting Out
Brought up in New England, Sennott began developing and showcasing comedy while pursuing performance 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. “None of the university plays cast me either.” And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She decided to act independently, performing at open mics with her friend and uploading uproarious (and decidedly) weird comedy videos digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically fixated on having babies; another imagined being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being caught in a scary movie. By chance, she encountered Emma through the university’s film scene and ultimately appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful comedy set at a Jewish wake with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her journey, she explains, has been people her own age giving her a shot, rather than traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, adding humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Career Breakthrough
Those who were skeptical about Sennott previously will certainly be kicking themselves now. Through she describes as a “wild, full-circle” development, she has achieved an ideal role. Previously she uploaded a clip titled “it’s LA” on social media, in which she mocked movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a show about LA residents balancing advantages of online celebrity (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being accused of being a drug-addled stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). One might simple to create a show about online fame that was horribly glamorous—or, worse, one that punched down at those depicted. This show does neither, creating a depiction of affluent twentysomething existence that’s honest about the mess and the shine.
Balanced Perspective
“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
