🔗 Share this article

Rachel Sennott joins the digital interview and immediately begins an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, appearing truly remorseful. Despite being only a couple of minutes behind, she needs 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!” Luckily, for a writer, that’s exactly what one hopes to experience. Besides, it’s quite unsurprising. Anyone familiar with her unapologetically queer and brash movie titled Bottoms—which Sennott penned with her creative partner and appeared in with her friend The Bear’s standout—would understand that Sennott holds plenty to share, whether about gender, intimacy, or the merits of forming a youth fight club. Furthermore, by the end the new seasonal show I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has additional perspectives about the struggles of young adulthood (As a millennial, she is a bridge for this generation, straddling eras with a knack for bridging both generations).

Influences and Artistic Direction

Likenesses to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and the actress admits to being enthusiastic, referencing it together with Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as guides for I Love LA, which follows the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and new talent manager Sennott’s character. Notably, the largest presence on the moodboard was reserved for the popular sitcom, that HBO sitcom depicting an up-and-coming A-list actor making his way in a corrupt LA scene (memorable line: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She started watching it amid COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and chose to create a new version on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.

“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The idea for this project came—in part—from her own, initially fractious, transition to Los Angeles and from the saturn return, a much-talked-about occurrence for followers. It was a phase that included her learn major life lessons, work-wise and individually. “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. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Humble Origins

Brought up in the East Coast, the star began writing and performing stand-up while enrolled in 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. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”

She decided to act independently, performing at live shows with her friend and sharing uproarious (and decidedly) unconventional online content on the internet. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women obsessively drawn to motherhood; another portrayed being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being caught in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Emma through the university’s film scene and eventually featuring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her journey, she says, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, instead of traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she confirms, adding with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Career Breakthrough

Anyone who questioned about her then will likely be regretting it today. As part of she describes as a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she seems to have manifested her dream vehicle. Previously she posted content called about Los Angeles on social media, in which she lampooned film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a series about LA residents juggling benefits of internet fame (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your associate being accused of being a drug-addled thief, and possibly becoming a unreliable pariah). Some could tempting to make a program about online fame that was overly aspirational—or, worse, one that punched down at its subjects. The series avoids both, creating a portrait of privileged millennial existence that’s candid about the chaos and the glamour.

Empathetic Approach

“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” she says. “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