Rachel Sennott enters the digital interview and right away launches into an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, appearing genuinely remorseful. Although she's only slightly behind, she feels compelled to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Thankfully, for a writer, this is just what one hopes to encounter. Moreover, it’s quite unsurprising. Viewers who know the fearlessly queer and brash movie titled Bottoms—which she penned with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside collaborator the talented actress—can understand that Sennott possesses plenty to share, be it on gender, intimacy, or the pros of starting a youth combat group. Furthermore, after watching her latest eight-part show titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she has even more thoughts regarding the struggles of Gen Z life (As a millennial, she is a relatable figure to younger audiences, on the cusp adept for connecting both generations).
Inspirations and Storytelling Approach
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, citing it in addition to the HBO hit, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as guides for her series, which follows the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also new talent manager Sennott’s character. However, the largest spot on concept went to the HBO series, that program focusing on an up-and-coming celebrity making his way in a corrupt Hollywood (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She began viewing it amid lockdown, became “hooked”, and chose to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she explains. The concept for the series came—in part—from firsthand, initially difficult, move to Los Angeles and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about phenomenon for followers. It was a phase that saw her learn some big life lessons, professionally 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. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Humble Origins
Raised in New England, Sennott commenced writing and performing humor while studying acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “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?”
She decided to act independently, taking the stage at live shows with Ayo and uploading hysterical (and very) unconventional online content digitally. One, Baby Cult, depicted several females intensely fixated on motherhood; a different one imagined being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being trapped in a scary movie. Interestingly, she met Seligman through campus film circles and eventually featuring in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a Jewish wake with shades of Uncut Gems. A recurring idea of her journey, she says, has been people her own age supporting her, as opposed to the industry at large. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she repeats, adding humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Career Breakthrough
Anyone who had doubts about her previously will surely be regretting it now. Through she calls a “wild, full-circle” story, she appears to achieved her dream vehicle. In 2019 she shared content named on LA life on social media, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos managing advantages of digital stardom (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your associate being labeled as being a drug-addled stealer, and perhaps becoming a unreliable outcast). It would be easy to create a show about online fame that was extremely idealized—or, even less favorable, one that mocked at the characters. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a representation of privileged millennial life that’s honest about the mess and the shine.
Balanced Perspective
“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” 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
