Rachel Sennott enters the video call and immediately launches into an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, appearing truly apologetic. She is only a bit delayed, she needs to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, for a writer, this is exactly what you want to encounter. Besides, it’s quite expected. Anyone who have seen her unapologetically LGBTQ+ and outspoken film Bottoms—which Sennott penned with Emma Seligman and featured in together with close companion The Bear’s standout—will already know that she possesses a lot to share, be it on gender, sex, or the appeal of starting a teen brawl society. And, by the end her latest seasonal HBO series I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has additional insights about the darker side of modern youth (Now in her thirties, she serves as an honorary member to younger audiences, on the cusp with a knack for connecting millennials and Gen Z).
Influences and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, referencing it together with the classic series, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for her series, which tracks the struggles of a social media star Tallulah and her friend and aspiring agent portrayed by Sennott. Notably, the most significant spot on the moodboard went to the popular sitcom, the program about an up-and-coming celebrity navigating in an often-seedy Hollywood (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott started watching it throughout COVID-19, became “captivated”, and chose to add a fresh perspective on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she notes. The idea for the series emerged—partly—from firsthand, at first fractious, relocation to Tinseltown and from her cosmic event, a much-talked-about phenomenon for followers. This represented an era that saw her learn significant truths, work-wise and personally. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Starting Out
Raised in New England, Sennott began writing and performing comedy while studying performance at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she says. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “None of the university plays cast me either.” And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at amateur nights with her friend and posting hysterical (and decidedly) weird comedy videos on the internet. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically drawn to motherhood; a different one portrayed working at the brand Hollister as similar to being caught in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ultimately featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful comedy set at a funeral gathering with hints of the intense thriller. The central motif of her path, she explains, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, rather than traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, continuing amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Rising Success
Those who had doubts regarding Sennott previously will likely be regretting it currently. In what she calls a “incredibly circular” story, she seems to have created an ideal role. In 2019 she uploaded content called about Los Angeles on social media, in which she mocked film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s executive producer (with her partner) of a comedy about Angelenos juggling the perks of online celebrity (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being labeled as being a drug-addled thief, and possibly becoming a unreliable pariah). It would be simple to create a show about digital influence that was extremely idealized—or, more problematic, one that mocked at the characters. I Love LA avoids both, creating a representation of advantaged twentysomething existence that’s candid about the mess 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
