Rachel Sennott joins the video call and right away begins an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, sounding really regretful. Despite being only a couple of minutes delayed, she needs to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, in this context, that’s precisely what one hopes to experience. Besides, it’s pretty predictable. Anyone who have seen the unapologetically queer and outspoken film Bottoms—that Sennott penned with her creative partner and featured in together with close companion The Bear’s standout—can understand that Sennott has plenty to say, whether on identity, intimacy, or the pros of creating a youth fight club. And, once you finish her latest eight-part show titled I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has further thoughts about the struggles of modern youth (At 30, she represents a bridge of the gang, straddling eras with a knack for bridging both generations).
Guiding Lights and Creative Vision
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott is a fan, naming the show together with the HBO hit, Insecure and Atlanta as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the travails of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and new representative portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the largest spot on the moodboard was reserved for the popular sitcom, that HBO sitcom focusing on a rising celebrity making his way in a gritty Hollywood (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She started watching it during lockdown, became “obsessed”, and chose to put her own twist on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she says. The concept for this project originated—to some extent—from firsthand, at first fractious, transition to Tinseltown and from the cosmic event, a popular occurrence for enthusiasts. It was a time that involved her grasp significant life lessons, work-wise and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Early Beginnings
Growing up in New England, the star started writing and performing comedy while enrolled in acting at a prestigious arts school. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she states. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. 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 took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and sharing hilarious (and decidedly) bizarre comedy videos on the internet. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically obsessed with having babies; another portrayed being employed at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being caught in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Emma through NYU’s movie community and ended up starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a Jewish wake with hints of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her path, she says, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, instead of established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, continuing with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Those who were skeptical about her then will surely be kicking themselves now. In what she labels a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she has created the perfect project. A few years back she uploaded content called “it’s LA” on social media, in which she lampooned movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s executive producer (with Emma Barrie) of a show about Angelenos balancing benefits of digital stardom (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being labeled as being a intoxicated thief, and possibly becoming a risky outcast). It would be tempting to create a series about online fame that was overly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that belittled at the characters. I Love LA does neither, creating a representation of privileged millennial living that’s frank about the mess and the appeal.
Empathetic Approach
“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
