Rachel Sennott appears on the online meeting and right away starts an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, sounding genuinely remorseful. Although she's only a bit delayed, she wants to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, during an interview, this is exactly what you want to experience. Moreover, it’s fairly expected. Anyone familiar with the boldly queer and brash movie Bottoms—which she co-wrote with the director and appeared in alongside collaborator Ayo Edebiri—will understand that she has a lot to share, whether on identity, sex, or the merits of creating a high-school fight club. Furthermore, once you finish her new seasonal program I Love LA, it is clear that the star has additional thoughts regarding the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, she serves as a relatable figure for this generation, straddling eras adept for straddling both generations).
Influences and Artistic Direction
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, naming it together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as guides for the project, which follows the struggles of a social media star Tallulah and her friend and aspiring agent Maia. Perhaps, the largest influence on the moodboard went to Entourage, the program about a rising Hollywood star making his way in a corrupt Hollywood (notable statement: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She began viewing it throughout COVID-19, became “captivated”, and decided to put her own twist 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 notes. The inspiration for this project emerged—to some extent—from her own, at first fractious, move to Los Angeles and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about occurrence for followers. It was an era that included her understand significant insights, work-wise 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 was almost like these biblical tests …”
Starting Out
Brought up in New England, the star commenced creating and acting stand-up while pursuing acting at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott decided to act independently, appearing at open mics with Edebiri and uploading hilarious (and very) bizarre online content online. One, titled Baby Cult, followed several females fetishistically drawn to having babies; another imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being stuck in a horror film. By chance, she encountered Emma through the university’s film scene and ultimately starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a funeral gathering 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 the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, continuing with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Rising Success
Those who had doubts about Sennott previously will certainly be regretting it now. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she seems to have manifested an ideal role. In 2019 she shared a clip called about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she parodied movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a series about Angelenos juggling benefits of digital stardom (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being accused of being a substance-abusing criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable pariah). It would be easy to make a show about internet celebrity that was extremely glamorous—or, worse, one that belittled at the characters. I Love LA steers clear of each, resulting in a representation of privileged young adult living that’s honest about the mess and the appeal.
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
