Rachel Sennott enters the online meeting and immediately starts an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, seeming truly remorseful. Despite being only a bit behind, she needs to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, for a writer, this is just what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s pretty expected. Anyone who know the boldly queer and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—that Sennott penned with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside collaborator Ayo Edebiri—would understand that she has much to share, whether on roles, sex, or the appeal of forming a youth fight club. Furthermore, once you finish her recent seasonal HBO series I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star carries even more insights about the struggles of Gen Z life (As a millennial, she serves as a bridge for this generation, a tale-end millennial adept for connecting both generations).
Inspirations and Artistic Direction
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott admits to being enthusiastic, citing it alongside the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as influences for the project, which follows the struggles of a social media star Tallulah and ally who is also aspiring agent Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the most significant influence on the moodboard was reserved for the HBO series, that show focusing on an emerging A-list actor navigating in a corrupt LA scene (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She started watching it throughout lockdown, became “hooked”, and decided to create a new version 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 came—in part—from her own, initially fractious, transition to Tinseltown and from the saturn return, a much-talked-about occurrence for astrology heads. It was an era that saw her grasp major life lessons, work-wise and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Humble Origins
Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott started writing and performing humor while enrolled in performance at a prestigious arts school. “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. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
She seized control, taking the stage at live shows with Edebiri and uploading uproarious (and decidedly) unconventional online content online. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on several females intensely fixated on having babies; a different one envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being caught in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she met Emma through NYU’s movie community and ended up appearing in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a religious event with hints of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her career, she explains, has been contemporaries supporting her, as opposed to established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, continuing amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who questioned regarding her previously will certainly be feeling foolish currently. As part of she calls a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she seems to have created her dream vehicle. In 2019 she uploaded content called about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she parodied film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos balancing advantages of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being labeled as being a substance-abusing thief, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). One might simple to create a program about digital influence that was extremely glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at those depicted. I Love LA avoids both, creating a portrait of privileged millennial existence that’s frank about the grot and the shine.
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 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
