Rachel Sennott joins the video call and right away begins an apology. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, sounding genuinely apologetic. She is only a bit behind, she feels compelled to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, for a writer, this is precisely what you want to hear. Moreover, it’s quite unsurprising. Anyone who know her boldly queer and outspoken film titled Bottoms—which she collaborated on with her creative partner and featured in with her friend the talented actress—can be aware that Sennott possesses much to discuss, whether about identity, sex, or the appeal of starting a youth fight club. Plus, once you finish the recent eight-part program I Love LA, viewers realize that she carries even more insights on the struggles of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott is a relatable figure to younger audiences, on the cusp skilled for bridging millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott admits to being enthusiastic, citing it alongside the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as guides for I Love LA, which follows the travails of online personality Tallulah and close companion and fledgling representative Sennott’s character. However, the largest influence on the moodboard belonged to the HBO series, that show depicting an emerging A-list actor navigating in a corrupt LA scene (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it throughout lockdown, became “hooked”, and resolved to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“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—in part—from her own, initially rocky, relocation to LA and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about event for enthusiasts. This represented an era that included her grasp major insights, in her career and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Early Beginnings
Raised in Connecticut, the star started writing and performing humor while studying theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
She decided to act independently, appearing at open mics with Edebiri and posting hysterical (and very) unconventional skits on the internet. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically drawn to having babies; another envisioned working at the brand Hollister as similar to being trapped in a scary movie. By chance, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and ultimately featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a religious event with shades of Uncut Gems. The central motif of her journey, she notes, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, rather than traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, adding with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Career Breakthrough
Anyone who questioned regarding her previously will surely be regretting it today. In what she describes as a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she appears to achieved the perfect project. A few years back she uploaded a clip called about Los Angeles on social media, in which she parodied film promos (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a series about city dwellers balancing the perks of internet fame (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being suspected of being a intoxicated criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable pariah). It would be tempting to create a show about digital influence that was overly idealized—or, worse, one that punched down at the characters. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a depiction of privileged millennial living that’s candid about the chaos 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 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
