🔗 Share this article

Rachel Sennott enters the online meeting and immediately begins an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, appearing genuinely remorseful. Despite being only slightly behind, she wants to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Fortunately, for a writer, this is exactly what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s fairly unsurprising. Viewers familiar with the unapologetically openly gay and unapologetically crass film Bottoms—which Sennott co-wrote with the director and featured in alongside collaborator Ayo Edebiri—can be aware that she has a lot to say, ranging from on gender, sex, or the pros of creating a teen combat group. And, by the end the recent multi-episode program titled I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has further insights on the struggles of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, she serves as an honorary member to younger audiences, on the cusp skilled for straddling different age groups).

Influences and Storytelling Approach

Likenesses to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott is enthusiastic, referencing the show alongside Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Atlanta as influences for her series, which tracks the journey of online personality Tallulah and ally who is also fledgling representative portrayed by Sennott. However, the most significant presence on creative vision went to the HBO series, the show about an up-and-coming celebrity making his way in a corrupt LA scene (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She began viewing it during COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and chose to put her own twist on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.

“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she says. The concept for I Love LA emerged—in part—from her own, originally fractious, relocation to LA and from her cosmic event, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. This represented a phase that saw her understand significant truths, professionally 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. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Early Beginnings

Growing up in Connecticut, the star started creating and acting stand-up while pursuing acting at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “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 decided to act independently, appearing at open mics with Ayo and uploading hysterical (and decidedly) weird comedy videos on the internet. One, Baby Cult, depicted characters obsessively fixated on pregnancy; a different one envisioned being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being caught in a horror film. By chance, she connected with Seligman through campus film circles and ultimately starring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a Jewish wake with hints of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her journey, she says, has been contemporaries supporting her, instead of traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “They were not involved”, she confirms, adding with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Career Breakthrough

Anyone who were skeptical about her then will certainly be feeling foolish now. In what she labels a “astonishingly complete” story, she seems to have manifested the perfect project. Previously she uploaded content titled “it’s LA” on social media, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a show about LA residents juggling benefits of internet fame (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being suspected of being a substance-abusing thief, and possibly becoming a unreliable pariah). One might simple to create a program about digital influence that was extremely glamorous—or, more problematic, one that belittled at its subjects. I Love LA does neither, making for a depiction of advantaged young adult life that’s honest about the grot and the glamour.

Empathetic Approach

“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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