🔗 Share this article

Rachel Sennott enters the online meeting and immediately begins an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, sounding truly apologetic. Despite being only slightly behind, she needs to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, during an interview, that’s exactly what is ideal to hear. Additionally, it’s pretty predictable. Viewers who know her fearlessly queer and brash movie titled Bottoms—which Sennott penned with the director and starred in alongside collaborator the talented actress—can be aware that she possesses a lot to share, whether about gender, sex, or the merits of forming a high-school fight club. Furthermore, once you finish her recent eight-part show I Love LA, it is clear that she holds additional insights on the darker side of modern youth (As a millennial, she is a bridge of the gang, on the cusp adept for bridging both generations).

Inspirations and Creative Vision

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress readily acknowledges an admirer, referencing it in addition to the classic series, Issa Rae’s show and the innovative program as inspirations for the project, which follows the journey of an influencer Tallulah and ally who is also fledgling agent Maia. Notably, the most significant influence on the moodboard belonged to the popular sitcom, the show focusing on an emerging Hollywood star succeeding in a gritty LA scene (memorable line: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott started watching it during the pandemic, became “captivated”, and chose to add a fresh perspective 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 notes. The inspiration for I Love LA emerged—in part—from personal, at first fractious, relocation to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed event for followers. It was an era that included her grasp major insights, professionally and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”

Starting Out

Brought up in New England, the star started developing and showcasing comedy while pursuing performance at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

She took matters into her own hands, appearing at amateur nights with her friend and sharing hysterical (and decidedly) bizarre comedy videos online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically fixated on having babies; another envisioned working at the brand Hollister as akin to being trapped in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she met Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ended up starring in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her journey, she notes, has been people her own age supporting her, rather than established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, stating humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Career Breakthrough

Anyone who were skeptical regarding Sennott earlier will likely be feeling foolish now. As part of she calls a “astonishingly complete” development, she has manifested her dream vehicle. In 2019 she uploaded a video called on LA life online, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about LA residents balancing advantages of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being accused of being a drug-addled criminal, and possibly becoming a risky outcast). It would be tempting to produce a program about digital influence that was horribly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that belittled at the characters. The series steers clear of each, resulting in a portrait of affluent young adult living that’s frank about the chaos and the appeal.

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