Rachel Sennott enters the video call and right away begins an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, sounding genuinely apologetic. Despite being only a bit late, she needs to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, for a writer, that’s just what is ideal to encounter. Additionally, it’s pretty predictable. Those familiar with the unapologetically LGBTQ+ and brash project titled Bottoms—which Sennott co-wrote with the director and starred in with close companion the talented actress—can already know that she has plenty to discuss, whether about roles, relationships, or the pros of starting a high-school brawl society. Furthermore, once you finish the latest eight-part HBO series titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star has additional perspectives regarding the struggles of Gen Z life (Now in her thirties, Sennott serves as a bridge to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial adept for connecting both generations).
Inspirations and Storytelling Approach
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress is a fan, citing the show together with Sex and the City, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for I Love LA, which details the journey of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and new talent manager Maia. Perhaps, the largest spot on the moodboard went to the popular sitcom, the HBO sitcom about an up-and-coming A-list actor navigating in a corrupt entertainment industry (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott started watching it amid COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and chose to create a new version on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she explains. The inspiration for this project came—partly—from her own, originally difficult, transition to Tinseltown and from the saturn return, a frequently discussed event for enthusiasts. That period marked an era that involved her understand significant life lessons, work-wise and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “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
Raised in Connecticut, Sennott began writing and performing stand-up while enrolled in performance at a prestigious arts school. “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. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, appearing at live shows with Ayo and sharing uproarious (and very) weird skits digitally. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed a group of women intensely fixated on pregnancy; another envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being trapped in a horror film. By chance, she connected with Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ultimately appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of Uncut Gems. A recurring idea of her career, she explains, has been peers giving her a shot, rather than traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, stating humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Career Breakthrough
Individuals who questioned about her earlier will certainly be kicking themselves now. As part of she calls a “astonishingly complete” story, she seems to have manifested her dream vehicle. Previously she uploaded a video named about Los Angeles online, in which she mocked movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s executive producer (with Emma Barrie) of a series about LA residents juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled stealer, and potentially becoming a unreliable pariah). It would be tempting to create a show about online fame that was extremely glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at its subjects. This show avoids both, creating a representation of affluent millennial existence that’s frank about the grot and the shine.
Empathetic Approach
“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
