Rachel Sennott joins the digital interview and immediately begins an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, sounding truly apologetic. Despite being only a couple of minutes delayed, she feels compelled to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Fortunately, in this context, that’s just what you want to encounter. Additionally, it’s pretty expected. Those who have seen the boldly LGBTQ+ and unapologetically crass movie titled Bottoms—that Sennott penned with her creative partner and featured in alongside collaborator The Bear’s standout—will already know that Sennott holds plenty to share, ranging from about gender, relationships, or the merits of forming a high-school brawl society. Plus, once you finish the recent multi-episode HBO series titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she holds additional thoughts about the challenges of Gen Z life (As a millennial, Sennott is a bridge to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial adept for straddling both generations).
Guiding Lights and Creative Vision
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and Sennott is a fan, naming it together with Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as guides for her series, which follows the journey of a social media star Tallulah and ally who is also aspiring agent portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the most significant presence on the moodboard went to the HBO series, that program focusing on an up-and-coming A-list actor succeeding in an often-seedy Hollywood (notable statement: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She began viewing it during COVID-19, became “captivated”, and chose to put her own twist on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she says. The idea for I Love LA originated—to some extent—from her own, initially fractious, transition to Los Angeles and from the saturn return, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. It was an era that involved her grasp significant insights, work-wise 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 was almost like these biblical tests …”
Early Beginnings
Raised in the East Coast, the star began developing and showcasing comedy while enrolled in theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she states. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, appearing at amateur nights with Edebiri and sharing hilarious (and decidedly) weird skits digitally. One, Baby Cult, depicted several females fetishistically drawn to motherhood; a different one envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being stuck in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she met Emma through campus film circles and eventually appearing in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a religious event with hints of Uncut Gems. A recurring idea of her path, she explains, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, rather than traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, adding humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Career Breakthrough
Individuals who questioned about Sennott then will certainly be regretting it now. In what she calls a “incredibly circular” story, she appears to achieved an ideal role. A few years back she posted content called “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she lampooned film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s executive producer (with Emma Barrie) of a show about Angelenos managing advantages of internet fame (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being labeled as being a drug-addled criminal, and possibly becoming a risky outcast). It would be tempting to create a program about internet celebrity that was overly idealized—or, more problematic, one that mocked at the characters. The series does neither, resulting in a portrait of advantaged millennial life 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 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
