Rachel Sennott joins the online meeting and at once begins an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, seeming truly remorseful. She is only a bit late, she wants to clarify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, in this context, that’s just what you want to hear. Additionally, it’s quite unsurprising. Anyone familiar with the boldly queer and outspoken film Bottoms—that Sennott collaborated on with her creative partner and featured in alongside collaborator The Bear’s standout—would already know that she holds a lot to discuss, ranging from on gender, sex, or the merits of starting a high-school fight club. Furthermore, once you finish her recent multi-episode program titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she has additional thoughts about the challenges of Gen Z life (As a millennial, Sennott is a bridge for this generation, a tale-end millennial with a knack for straddling both generations).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
Parallels to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and the actress readily acknowledges an admirer, citing the show together with the classic series, Insecure and the innovative program as guides for her series, which details the travails of an influencer Tallulah and ally who is also new agent Sennott’s character. However, the biggest presence on the moodboard belonged to Entourage, the program depicting an up-and-coming Hollywood star succeeding in a corrupt Hollywood (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She began viewing it throughout COVID-19, became “hooked”, and decided 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 idea for I Love LA emerged—to some extent—from personal, at first rocky, transition to Los Angeles and from the cosmic event, a popular occurrence for enthusiasts. This represented an era that saw her learn major insights, professionally and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Starting Out
Raised in Connecticut, the star started creating and acting comedy while enrolled in acting at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott seized control, taking the stage at live shows with Ayo and uploading hysterical (and distinctly) unconventional comedy videos online. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females obsessively fixated on pregnancy; a different one portrayed working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being caught in a scary movie. Interestingly, she encountered Seligman through campus film circles and ended up featuring in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a Jewish wake with hints of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her path, she explains, has been people her own age giving her a shot, as opposed to the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, continuing amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who were skeptical regarding Sennott earlier will certainly be regretting it currently. In what she labels a “wild, full-circle” story, she appears to achieved an ideal role. In 2019 she uploaded a video named “it’s LA” online, in which she parodied film promos (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a comedy about Angelenos managing the perks of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your friend being suspected of being a substance-abusing stealer, and perhaps becoming a unreliable persona non grata). One might tempting to create a series about internet celebrity that was extremely aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at those depicted. This show avoids both, resulting in a portrait of affluent twentysomething life that’s frank about the chaos and the glamour.
Nuanced Portrayal
“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
