Rachel Sennott appears on the digital interview and at once begins an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, seeming really regretful. Despite being only a bit behind, she needs to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Thankfully, in this context, that’s exactly what you want to experience. Besides, it’s fairly unsurprising. Anyone familiar with the unapologetically openly gay and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—that Sennott penned with Emma Seligman and appeared in together with close companion The Bear’s standout—can already know that she possesses plenty to discuss, ranging from on roles, sex, or the pros of forming a youth fight club. And, once you finish her recent seasonal HBO series I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she has further perspectives about the darker side of Gen Z life (As a millennial, she is a bridge for this generation, a tale-end millennial with a knack for bridging different age groups).
Influences and Artistic Direction
Parallels to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott is a fan, citing it alongside Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Atlanta as guides for her series, which details the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also new agent Sennott’s character. Notably, the biggest spot on the moodboard went to the HBO series, that program about an emerging A-list actor making his way in an often-seedy entertainment industry (notable statement: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it during the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and chose to add a fresh perspective on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The concept for this project came—to some extent—from firsthand, initially fractious, transition to Los Angeles and from her astrological phase, a frequently discussed phenomenon for astrology heads. This represented an era that involved her grasp major life lessons, in her career and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “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 Connecticut, Sennott began creating and acting comedy while studying acting 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 took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and sharing uproarious (and very) bizarre skits online. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females intensely drawn to pregnancy; another envisioned working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being caught in a horror film. By chance, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a Jewish wake with shades of the intense thriller. The central motif of her career, she notes, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, instead of established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she confirms, adding amusedly: “They don’t want us to win.”
Career Breakthrough
Anyone who questioned about her then will surely be feeling foolish today. Through she labels a “wild, full-circle” story, she seems to have manifested her dream vehicle. In 2019 she posted a clip called “it’s LA” online, in which she mocked film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a comedy about LA residents managing advantages of internet fame (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being labeled as being a drug-addled stealer, and perhaps becoming a risky outcast). It would be simple to create a show about digital influence that was extremely idealized—or, more problematic, one that punched down at its subjects. I Love LA avoids both, creating a portrait of advantaged millennial life that’s honest about the chaos and the appeal.
Balanced Perspective
“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
