Rachel Sennott joins the digital interview and immediately starts an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, appearing really regretful. Although she's only a couple of minutes delayed, she feels compelled to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, in this context, this is exactly what one hopes to hear. Besides, it’s pretty expected. Those who know the fearlessly openly gay and brash movie titled Bottoms—which she co-wrote with the director and starred in together with close companion the talented actress—will already know that Sennott holds a lot to say, be it about gender, intimacy, or the merits of creating a youth brawl society. And, after watching the latest seasonal show titled I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has even more insights regarding the challenges of modern youth (Now in her thirties, she is a relatable figure of the gang, a tale-end millennial adept for bridging both generations).
Inspirations and Creative Vision
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and the actress is an admirer, referencing the show alongside Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and the innovative program as inspirations for the project, which tracks the struggles of online personality Tallulah and her friend and fledgling agent Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the most significant spot on creative vision belonged to the popular sitcom, that HBO sitcom focusing on a rising Hollywood star making his way in an often-seedy LA scene (notable statement: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott discovered it amid lockdown, became “captivated”, and decided 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 inspiration for I Love LA came—to some extent—from her own, originally fractious, relocation to Los Angeles and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed occurrence for followers. This represented an era that included 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. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Early Beginnings
Raised in New England, Sennott commenced writing and performing humor while pursuing theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” 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.”
Sennott decided to act independently, performing at amateur nights with Ayo and uploading hysterical (and very) bizarre online content online. One, Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically fixated on having babies; a different one portrayed being employed at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being caught in a thriller. By chance, she met Emma through campus film circles and ended up starring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a religious event with shades of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her career, she says, has been peers supporting her, instead of established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, adding with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who had doubts about Sennott earlier will surely be kicking themselves today. In what she describes as a “astonishingly complete” story, she seems to have manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded a video titled on LA life online, in which she parodied film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a series about LA residents managing the perks of internet fame (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your friend being accused of being a intoxicated criminal, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). Some could tempting to create a program about digital influence that was overly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that punched down at those depicted. The series does neither, creating a portrait of affluent twentysomething existence that’s honest about the mess and the glamour.
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 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
