Rachel Sennott enters the video call and right away launches into an explanation. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, sounding genuinely regretful. Despite being only slightly late, she feels compelled to justify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Fortunately, in this context, this is exactly what is ideal to experience. Moreover, it’s pretty expected. Those who have seen her boldly LGBTQ+ and outspoken project titled Bottoms—that Sennott penned with Emma Seligman and starred in together with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—would already know that Sennott holds much to share, ranging from on gender, intimacy, or the merits of starting a youth combat group. And, once you finish her latest eight-part HBO series I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has even more thoughts on the challenges of modern youth (As a millennial, she serves as an honorary member to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial with a knack for bridging millennials and Gen Z).
Influences and Creative Vision
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott is a fan, naming it alongside the classic series, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for I Love LA, which follows the journey of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also aspiring talent manager Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the biggest influence on concept was reserved for the popular sitcom, the show focusing on an up-and-coming celebrity succeeding in an often-seedy Hollywood (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott started watching it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and resolved to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she says. The concept for this project emerged—to some extent—from her own, at first difficult, relocation to LA and from the cosmic event, a popular phenomenon for followers. It was an era that saw her understand significant truths, professionally and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Early Beginnings
Brought up in the East Coast, the star started creating and acting 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 explains. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She seized control, performing at amateur nights with Edebiri and posting hilarious (and distinctly) bizarre comedy videos digitally. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted characters intensely fixated on pregnancy; another envisioned being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being caught in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Seligman through campus film circles and eventually appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a funeral gathering with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her journey, she notes, has been people her own age giving her a shot, rather than established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, continuing humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Career Breakthrough
Those who questioned about her earlier will likely be kicking themselves today. As part of she calls a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she has achieved an ideal role. In 2019 she shared content called “it’s LA” online, in which she parodied movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a series about Angelenos juggling the perks of digital stardom (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your friend being labeled as being a drug-addled criminal, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). Some could simple to create a program about internet celebrity that was extremely idealized—or, worse, one that punched down at the characters. I Love LA does neither, creating a portrait of affluent young adult living that’s candid 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
