Rachel Sennott enters the online meeting and right away begins an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, seeming genuinely remorseful. Although she's only slightly delayed, she needs to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, in this context, that’s just what one hopes to encounter. Additionally, it’s pretty unsurprising. Anyone familiar with her fearlessly LGBTQ+ and outspoken film Bottoms—that Sennott penned with the director and appeared in alongside close companion the talented actress—can already know that Sennott possesses plenty to share, whether about identity, relationships, or the pros of forming a high-school brawl society. Furthermore, once you finish her latest eight-part show I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she has even more thoughts on the struggles of young adulthood (At 30, Sennott is an honorary member of the gang, on the cusp adept for straddling both generations).
Inspirations and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and the actress is an admirer, naming it together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and the innovative program as guides for I Love LA, which follows the journey of a social media star Tallulah and ally and new agent Maia. Perhaps, the largest spot on the moodboard belonged to the popular sitcom, the HBO sitcom about an up-and-coming A-list actor making his way in a gritty LA scene (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and decided to create a new version 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 explains. The idea for this project came—to some extent—from her own, originally difficult, move to Los Angeles and from the saturn return, a much-talked-about event for followers. It was a phase that saw her learn some big life lessons, in her career and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she recalls. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Starting Out
Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott started writing and performing humor while studying acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she says. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott seized control, taking the stage at amateur nights with Edebiri and uploading hilarious (and very) unconventional online content online. One, Baby Cult, depicted a group of women intensely obsessed with pregnancy; another imagined working at a trendy retail outlet as like being trapped in a thriller. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Emma through the university’s film scene and ultimately featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a funeral gathering with hints of Uncut Gems. A recurring idea of her path, she says, has been peers giving her a shot, instead of traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, stating with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who were skeptical about Sennott previously will certainly be regretting it today. In what she labels a “incredibly circular” story, she has achieved her dream vehicle. Previously she posted a clip named “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a comedy about Angelenos juggling the perks of internet fame (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being labeled as being a drug-addled thief, and potentially becoming a unreliable outcast). Some could easy to create a program about online fame that was horribly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that mocked at those depicted. I Love LA does neither, creating a representation of affluent millennial life that’s frank about the mess and the glamour.
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 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
