Rachel Sennott appears on the online meeting and immediately starts an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, seeming genuinely apologetic. Although she's only slightly behind, she feels compelled to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Fortunately, in this context, that’s exactly what is ideal to encounter. Besides, it’s fairly expected. Viewers who know the fearlessly LGBTQ+ and outspoken film Bottoms—that Sennott penned with the director and starred in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—would understand that she possesses much to discuss, ranging from about gender, relationships, or the pros of starting a teen fight club. Plus, once you finish her latest eight-part program titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star has even more perspectives regarding the challenges of modern youth (As a millennial, she serves as an honorary member to younger audiences, straddling eras skilled for straddling different age groups).
Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction
Parallels to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, naming it alongside Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and the innovative program as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion who is also fledgling talent manager Sennott’s character. However, the biggest presence on concept was reserved for the HBO series, that program about an emerging A-list actor succeeding in a corrupt LA scene (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it during COVID-19, became “hooked”, and chose 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 explains. The concept for this project emerged—to some extent—from firsthand, at first fractious, move to LA and from her saturn return, a popular event for astrology heads. That period marked an era that included her learn significant insights, work-wise and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “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
Growing up in Connecticut, Sennott started writing and performing stand-up while studying theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She decided to act independently, performing at amateur nights with Ayo and sharing hysterical (and very) bizarre online content digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on characters fetishistically fixated on having babies; another envisioned being employed at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being stuck in a scary movie. Interestingly, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her career, she says, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, continuing amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Career Breakthrough
Those who had doubts regarding Sennott previously will surely be kicking themselves now. As part of she describes as a “astonishingly complete” story, she seems to have achieved her dream vehicle. Previously she shared a video titled about Los Angeles online, in which she parodied movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a show about Angelenos managing the perks of internet fame (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being suspected of being a drug-addled criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable outcast). Some could simple to make a show about digital influence that was extremely glamorous—or, worse, one that belittled at its subjects. The series avoids both, creating a depiction of privileged twentysomething life that’s honest about the grot and the appeal.
Empathetic Approach
“Many programs portray youth and online life with disdain and mockery,” she comments. “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
