Rachel Sennott appears on the online meeting and right away starts an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, seeming genuinely apologetic. Although she's only a couple of minutes delayed, she needs to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, during an interview, that’s precisely what you want to hear. Moreover, it’s quite unsurprising. Viewers who have seen the boldly openly gay and unapologetically crass film Bottoms—which she penned with Emma Seligman and featured in together with collaborator the talented actress—would understand that she possesses a lot to share, whether on roles, intimacy, or the appeal of creating a youth fight club. Plus, by the end the new multi-episode program I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she holds even more thoughts regarding the struggles of modern youth (Now in her thirties, she is a relatable figure for this generation, a tale-end millennial with a knack for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Creative Vision
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and the actress admits to being an admirer, citing the show in addition to the HBO hit, Insecure and Atlanta as influences for her series, which details the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and aspiring talent manager portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the biggest influence on creative vision belonged to the HBO series, the HBO sitcom depicting an emerging celebrity navigating in a gritty entertainment industry (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She started watching it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and decided 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 explains. The idea for I Love LA emerged—in part—from her own, at first rocky, relocation to Los Angeles and from the astrological phase, a frequently discussed event for enthusiasts. This represented an era that included her grasp some big life lessons, in her career and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Early Beginnings
Growing up in Connecticut, Sennott commenced developing and showcasing stand-up while studying theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she says. “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?”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, performing at open mics with Ayo and posting hysterical (and decidedly) weird online content on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on several females obsessively obsessed with having babies; another imagined working at the brand Hollister as similar to being stuck in a scary movie. By chance, she encountered Emma through campus film circles and ended up featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a Jewish wake with hints of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her path, she notes, has been contemporaries supporting her, as opposed to established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, adding with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Rising Success
Individuals who had doubts regarding her then will certainly be feeling foolish today. Through she calls a “incredibly circular” development, she has manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she shared content titled on LA life on the internet, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a comedy about LA residents juggling the perks of digital stardom (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled stealer, and potentially becoming a unreliable persona non grata). Some could easy to make a program about digital influence that was overly idealized—or, more problematic, one that mocked at its subjects. This show avoids both, resulting in a representation of affluent twentysomething life that’s honest about the chaos and the glamour.
Balanced Perspective
“Many programs portray youth and online life with disdain and mockery,” 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
