Rachel Sennott appears on the digital interview and immediately launches into an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, appearing really regretful. Despite being only slightly delayed, she needs to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, in this context, that’s just what one hopes to encounter. Additionally, it’s fairly predictable. Those familiar with the boldly queer and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with the director and appeared in together with close companion The Bear’s standout—will be aware that she has plenty to share, be it on roles, relationships, or the appeal of forming a high-school brawl society. And, once you finish her new seasonal show I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has even more thoughts on the darker side of modern youth (Now in her thirties, she is a bridge to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial adept for connecting millennials and Gen Z).
Influences and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott admits to being enthusiastic, referencing the show in addition to the classic series, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as influences for her series, which follows the struggles of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also new talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the biggest influence on the moodboard belonged to Entourage, that show depicting an emerging celebrity succeeding in a gritty Hollywood (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it during COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and resolved to create a new version 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 says. The idea for this project emerged—to some extent—from personal, initially rocky, move to LA and from her astrological phase, a frequently discussed event for enthusiasts. That period marked an era that involved her understand major life lessons, professionally and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Early Beginnings
Raised in the East Coast, Sennott started writing and performing humor while enrolled in performance at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “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?”
She seized control, appearing at live shows with Edebiri and posting hysterical (and decidedly) unconventional online content digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females fetishistically obsessed with pregnancy; another envisioned working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being caught in a thriller. In a neat twist of fate, she met Emma through campus film circles and eventually starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a funeral gathering with hints of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her career, she explains, has been people her own age supporting her, rather than traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “They were not involved”, she confirms, continuing humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Rising Success
Anyone who had doubts about her earlier will likely be regretting it currently. Through she labels a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she seems to have manifested her dream vehicle. A few years back she uploaded content titled on LA life on the internet, in which she lampooned Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a series about LA residents managing benefits of internet fame (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your client being suspected of being a substance-abusing stealer, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). It would be tempting to make a show about internet celebrity that was extremely glamorous—or, worse, one that punched down at its subjects. This show does neither, making for a representation of privileged twentysomething life that’s candid about the chaos and the glamour.
Nuanced Portrayal
“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
