Rachel Sennott appears on the online meeting and at once begins an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, appearing truly remorseful. Despite being only a couple of minutes delayed, she wants to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, during an interview, this is exactly what one hopes to experience. Additionally, it’s fairly predictable. Those who know the unapologetically openly gay and brash movie Bottoms—that Sennott collaborated on with Emma Seligman and appeared in alongside collaborator Ayo Edebiri—would understand that she possesses much to share, be it about roles, sex, or the pros of creating a teen brawl society. And, by the end her recent seasonal HBO series I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has additional thoughts about the challenges of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott is a bridge to younger audiences, straddling eras adept for bridging different age groups).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and the actress admits to being an admirer, citing the show alongside Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as influences for I Love LA, which follows the journey of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion who is also new representative Sennott’s character. However, the biggest spot on concept was reserved for the popular sitcom, that HBO sitcom depicting a rising Hollywood star making his way in a gritty Hollywood (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it amid the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose to create a new version on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she notes. The concept for I Love LA originated—partly—from firsthand, at first rocky, move to Los Angeles and from the cosmic event, a popular phenomenon for followers. This represented an era that included her grasp major truths, work-wise and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Early Beginnings
Growing up in the East Coast, Sennott began writing and performing humor while studying acting 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. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She decided to act independently, performing at live shows with Ayo and uploading hilarious (and decidedly) unconventional comedy videos on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed a group of women intensely obsessed with having babies; another envisioned working at the brand Hollister as akin to being caught in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she met Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually appearing in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a religious event with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her career, she notes, has been peers supporting her, instead of traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “They were not involved”, she confirms, stating humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who questioned about her earlier will surely be regretting it now. In what she describes as a “incredibly circular” story, she seems to have achieved the perfect project. A few years back she shared a video named about Los Angeles online, in which she parodied film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s executive producer (with her partner) of a comedy about city dwellers balancing benefits of digital stardom (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being suspected of being a substance-abusing thief, and perhaps becoming a risky pariah). It would be simple to create a show about online fame that was extremely glamorous—or, worse, one that belittled at its subjects. This show does neither, making for a depiction of privileged millennial existence that’s frank about the grot and the appeal.
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
