Rachel Sennott appears on the digital interview and right away begins an explanation. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, appearing really apologetic. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she feels compelled to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, in this context, that’s exactly what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s fairly expected. Viewers who know her fearlessly queer and brash project titled Bottoms—which Sennott penned with her creative partner and starred in with close companion Ayo Edebiri—will already know that Sennott has plenty to say, whether on roles, intimacy, or the appeal of starting a high-school combat group. And, after watching her latest multi-episode program titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she has additional perspectives regarding the challenges of modern youth (Now in her thirties, Sennott serves as a relatable figure of the gang, straddling eras skilled for straddling different age groups).
Inspirations and Creative Vision
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and Sennott is enthusiastic, naming it alongside the HBO hit, Insecure and Atlanta as influences for I Love LA, which follows the journey of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and new talent manager Maia. Notably, the most significant influence on the moodboard belonged to the HBO series, that show depicting an up-and-coming A-list actor succeeding in a gritty entertainment industry (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott started watching it during lockdown, became “hooked”, and chose to create a new version on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she notes. The inspiration for this project originated—partly—from firsthand, initially rocky, move to Los Angeles and from her astrological phase, a frequently discussed phenomenon for astrology heads. It was a time that included her learn major insights, in her career and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “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
Brought up in New England, Sennott began creating and acting comedy while pursuing theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she states. “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 seized control, appearing at open mics with her friend and uploading uproarious (and very) weird skits digitally. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted a group of women obsessively drawn to having babies; a different one imagined being employed at the brand Hollister as like being caught in a horror film. By chance, she connected with Emma through campus film circles and eventually appearing in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a religious event with hints of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her journey, she notes, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, rather than traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she repeats, stating amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Those who questioned about her previously will certainly be kicking themselves today. In what she calls a “wild, full-circle” story, she seems to have achieved an ideal role. Previously she uploaded content titled on LA life on the internet, in which she lampooned film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a series about city dwellers juggling benefits of online celebrity (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled thief, and potentially becoming a risky persona non grata). Some could easy to make a program about digital influence that was overly aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at the characters. I Love LA avoids both, making for a depiction of advantaged 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 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
