Rachel Sennott appears on the online meeting and right away starts an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, appearing genuinely remorseful. Despite being only a bit delayed, she needs 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, that’s precisely what one hopes to experience. Moreover, it’s fairly expected. Viewers who know her boldly queer and unapologetically crass project Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with her creative partner and appeared in together with close companion Ayo Edebiri—will already know that Sennott possesses plenty to say, be it on identity, relationships, or the pros of forming a youth brawl society. Furthermore, after watching the recent seasonal program titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she carries even more insights regarding the darker side of modern youth (At 30, she is a relatable figure of the gang, a tale-end millennial skilled for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and the actress readily acknowledges an admirer, naming it alongside Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the journey of online personality Tallulah and close companion who is also new talent manager Maia. Notably, the largest influence on the moodboard was reserved for the HBO series, that HBO sitcom depicting an emerging Hollywood star making his way in an often-seedy Hollywood (notable statement: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it amid the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose to put her own twist 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 inspiration for I Love LA came—partly—from personal, originally rocky, relocation to LA and from her saturn return, a popular phenomenon for enthusiasts. This represented an era that involved her grasp some big truths, professionally and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Early Beginnings
Raised in Connecticut, Sennott started writing and performing stand-up while enrolled in 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 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.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She decided to act independently, taking the stage at live shows with her friend and posting hilarious (and decidedly) bizarre online content online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females intensely fixated on motherhood; another imagined being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being trapped in a scary movie. By chance, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and eventually appearing in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a religious event with hints of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her journey, she says, has been contemporaries supporting her, instead of the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, stating humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Rising Success
Those who had doubts about her then will surely be regretting it now. In what she labels a “incredibly circular” development, she has achieved her dream vehicle. In 2019 she uploaded content named on LA life on the internet, in which she lampooned movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a comedy about city dwellers balancing benefits of online celebrity (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being accused of being a substance-abusing stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). One might simple to create a show about internet celebrity that was horribly aspirational—or, worse, one that belittled at its subjects. I Love LA steers clear of each, resulting in a depiction of advantaged young adult living that’s honest about the mess and the appeal.
Balanced Perspective
“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” she says. “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
