🔗 Share this article

Rachel Sennott enters the video call and immediately starts an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, sounding really regretful. She is only slightly late, she feels compelled to explain. “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 encounter. Moreover, it’s quite expected. Viewers who have seen the unapologetically queer and unapologetically crass project Bottoms—which she co-wrote with the director and starred in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—can already know that she has a lot to discuss, whether about gender, sex, or the appeal of starting a teen combat group. And, once you finish her recent seasonal show I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star carries additional perspectives on the challenges of modern youth (Now in her thirties, Sennott serves as a relatable figure for this generation, on the cusp skilled for connecting different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and Sennott is enthusiastic, citing it alongside the classic series, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as influences for the project, which tracks the struggles of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also aspiring representative Maia. Perhaps, the biggest influence on creative vision went to the popular sitcom, that program about an up-and-coming celebrity succeeding in a gritty LA scene (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott discovered it throughout the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose 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—partly—from her own, originally difficult, transition to Tinseltown and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about event for enthusiasts. It was an era that involved her understand major insights, work-wise and individually. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” 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…”

Starting Out

Brought up in New England, Sennott began developing and showcasing comedy while pursuing theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “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?”

Sennott seized control, appearing at live shows with Edebiri and sharing hilarious (and very) unconventional online content online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females fetishistically drawn to pregnancy; a different one portrayed working at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being trapped in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she met Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ultimately appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a funeral gathering with hints of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her journey, she explains, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, continuing with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Rising Success

Anyone who had doubts about her then will surely be regretting it today. As part of she calls a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she appears to created the perfect project. A few years back she shared a clip called about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she mocked film promos (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about Angelenos managing advantages of digital stardom (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your client being suspected of being a intoxicated thief, and potentially becoming a unreliable persona non grata). One might easy to make a show about online fame that was extremely aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at its subjects. This show steers clear of each, creating a portrait of affluent young adult existence that’s frank about the chaos and the appeal.

Empathetic Approach

“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” she comments. “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