The actress and writer on the uproarious show about the messy glamour of Gen Z life
Rachel Sennott enters the video call and at once starts an apology. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, sounding genuinely apologetic. Despite being only a bit delayed, she wants to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Luckily, in this context, that’s exactly what you want to experience. Moreover, it’s fairly predictable. Anyone familiar with her unapologetically LGBTQ+ and brash project Bottoms—that Sennott collaborated on with the director and appeared in together with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—will be aware that Sennott holds a lot to discuss, whether on gender, sex, or the merits of starting a teen brawl society. Plus, after watching her recent eight-part program titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she has additional perspectives regarding the challenges of modern youth (At 30, Sennott is a bridge to younger audiences, on the cusp skilled for straddling different age groups).
Influences and Creative Vision
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show naturally arise and Sennott readily acknowledges a fan, referencing the show together with the HBO hit, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for her series, which follows the struggles of online personality Tallulah and her friend and fledgling representative Maia. Perhaps, the biggest influence on creative vision went to the HBO series, the program depicting an emerging celebrity navigating in an often-seedy Hollywood (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it throughout COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and resolved to create a new version 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 inspiration for the series originated—to some extent—from personal, at first fractious, transition to Tinseltown and from the astrological phase, a much-talked-about occurrence for followers. That period marked an era that involved her learn significant life lessons, work-wise and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “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…”
Early Beginnings
Growing up in Connecticut, Sennott commenced writing and performing comedy while studying theatre at a prestigious arts school. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” 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 decided to act independently, taking the stage at amateur nights with her friend and sharing hilarious (and distinctly) bizarre comedy videos online. One, titled Baby Cult, followed a group of women intensely drawn to pregnancy; another portrayed working at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being stuck in a thriller. Interestingly, she met Emma through NYU’s movie community and ultimately featuring in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her journey, she says, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she confirms, continuing amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Career Breakthrough
Anyone who were skeptical about Sennott previously will certainly be regretting it now. In what she describes as a “wild, full-circle” story, she seems to have achieved the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded content titled on LA life online, in which she parodied movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a show about LA residents juggling the perks of internet fame (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being accused of being a drug-addled criminal, and possibly becoming a unreliable outcast). One might simple to create a show about internet celebrity that was horribly glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at those depicted. I Love LA steers clear of each, resulting in a representation of advantaged twentysomething living that’s candid about the grot and the glamour.
Empathetic Approach
“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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