Rachel Sennott enters the digital interview and immediately begins an explanation. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, seeming truly apologetic. Despite being only a couple of minutes behind, she feels compelled to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Fortunately, for a writer, this is just what you want to hear. Moreover, it’s fairly unsurprising. Viewers familiar with her unapologetically queer and brash movie titled Bottoms—that she co-wrote with the director and starred in together with collaborator The Bear’s standout—can already know that she holds plenty to share, ranging from on identity, sex, or the merits of creating a teen brawl society. Plus, once you finish the latest multi-episode show I Love LA, viewers realize that the star carries additional perspectives on the struggles of Gen Z life (Now in her thirties, she serves as a bridge to younger audiences, straddling eras with a knack for connecting different age groups).
Inspirations and Artistic Direction
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott admits to being a fan, naming it in addition to Sex and the City, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for the project, which details the travails of online personality Tallulah and close companion who is also aspiring talent manager portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the biggest influence on creative vision went to the popular sitcom, that show focusing on an emerging Hollywood star navigating in a gritty Hollywood (memorable line: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She began viewing it amid lockdown, became “captivated”, and resolved 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 notes. The concept for I Love LA emerged—partly—from personal, at first rocky, move to Tinseltown and from the saturn return, a frequently discussed event for enthusiasts. It was a time that included her understand significant life lessons, professionally and individually. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Early Beginnings
Raised in New England, the star began writing and performing stand-up 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 explains. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She seized control, appearing at open mics with her friend and posting uproarious (and decidedly) bizarre skits online. One, titled Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically obsessed with motherhood; another portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as like being stuck in a thriller. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Emma through NYU’s movie community and ultimately featuring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her journey, she explains, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, as opposed to established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, adding amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who had doubts about her then will likely be regretting it currently. Through she describes as a “incredibly circular” development, she has created the perfect project. A few years back she shared a clip titled about Los Angeles online, in which she lampooned movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a comedy about Angelenos juggling benefits of digital stardom (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being accused of being a intoxicated criminal, and possibly becoming a risky outcast). Some could tempting to produce a program about online fame that was overly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that belittled at its subjects. The series avoids both, resulting in a depiction of affluent twentysomething life that’s frank about the chaos 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 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
