Rachel Sennott joins the digital interview and immediately launches into an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, seeming truly apologetic. Despite being only slightly delayed, she needs to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” 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. Besides, it’s pretty unsurprising. Those familiar with the unapologetically openly gay and unapologetically crass project titled Bottoms—that she collaborated on with her creative partner and starred in together with her friend the talented actress—will already know that she possesses much to say, be it on identity, intimacy, or the pros of forming a teen brawl society. And, once you finish her latest multi-episode program titled I Love LA, viewers realize that the star carries even more insights on the darker side of Gen Z life (Now in her thirties, she is a relatable figure of the gang, straddling eras adept for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction
Parallels to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott is a fan, naming the show in addition to Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as guides for the project, which tracks the travails of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and ally and new representative Sennott’s character. However, the biggest spot on creative vision was reserved for the popular sitcom, the HBO sitcom focusing on an up-and-coming A-list actor navigating in an often-seedy LA scene (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott began viewing it throughout the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose to add a fresh perspective 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 concept for the series originated—in part—from her own, initially rocky, relocation to Los Angeles and from the saturn return, a popular occurrence for enthusiasts. This represented a phase that included her learn some big 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. “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
Raised in New England, the star commenced writing and performing humor while studying performance at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott seized control, performing at open mics with Edebiri and uploading uproarious (and very) weird online content on the internet. One, Baby Cult, depicted several females obsessively obsessed with motherhood; another portrayed being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being trapped in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Seligman through campus film circles and ended up appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a religious event with shades of Uncut Gems. The central motif of her journey, she explains, has been peers offering opportunities, instead of traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she repeats, adding amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Rising Success
Individuals who were skeptical regarding her earlier will surely be regretting it currently. As part of she labels a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she seems to have manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded a clip named about Los Angeles online, in which she lampooned movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a series about Angelenos managing advantages of online celebrity (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being labeled as being a intoxicated criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable pariah). It would be easy to make a series about online fame that was extremely idealized—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at its subjects. I Love LA steers clear of each, resulting in a portrait of affluent twentysomething life that’s honest about the mess and the appeal.
Balanced Perspective
“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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
