Rachel Sennott joins the digital interview and right away launches into an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, sounding truly remorseful. Although she's only slightly delayed, she feels compelled to clarify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, for a writer, that’s exactly what one hopes to encounter. Besides, it’s quite unsurprising. Viewers who know her unapologetically LGBTQ+ and brash movie titled Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with the director and featured in alongside her friend the talented actress—would already know that she has a lot to say, be it about gender, relationships, or the appeal of starting a high-school fight club. And, once you finish her latest multi-episode HBO series I Love LA, it is clear that the star holds further perspectives on the struggles of young adulthood (At 30, she represents an honorary member of the gang, on the cusp with a knack for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott is a fan, citing the show together with the classic series, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the travails of a social media star Tallulah and her friend and fledgling talent manager Sennott’s character. Notably, the most significant influence on the moodboard was reserved for Entourage, that show depicting an up-and-coming A-list actor navigating in a corrupt Hollywood (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott started watching it amid the pandemic, became “captivated”, and chose to put her own twist on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she explains. The inspiration for this project originated—to some extent—from personal, at first fractious, move to Los Angeles and from her cosmic event, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. It was an era that saw her learn significant life lessons, work-wise and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Starting Out
Brought up in New England, the star started creating and acting humor while pursuing performance at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she says. “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 open mics with her friend and posting uproarious (and distinctly) unconventional skits online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically drawn to having babies; another portrayed being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being caught in a thriller. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Emma through the university’s film scene and ultimately appearing in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a funeral gathering with hints of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her journey, she notes, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, adding humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Career Breakthrough
Anyone who were skeptical about Sennott then will certainly be regretting it currently. In what she describes as a “astonishingly complete” development, she has manifested her dream vehicle. In 2019 she uploaded a clip named about Los Angeles on social media, in which she lampooned movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a show about Angelenos juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being accused of being a intoxicated stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). Some could simple to produce a program about internet celebrity that was horribly aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at its subjects. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a representation of affluent millennial living that’s candid about the grot and the appeal.
Nuanced Portrayal
“Many programs portray youth and online life with disdain and mockery,” 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
