Rachel Sennott joins the video call and immediately begins an apology. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, appearing truly apologetic. She is only a bit delayed, she needs to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, for a writer, this is precisely what is ideal to hear. Moreover, it’s quite predictable. Anyone who have seen her boldly openly gay and outspoken project titled Bottoms—that Sennott penned with the director and appeared in alongside collaborator the talented actress—would understand that she has much to say, ranging from about identity, intimacy, or the merits of starting a teen fight club. Furthermore, after watching the new eight-part show I Love LA, it is clear that she carries even more thoughts about the challenges of Gen Z life (As a millennial, Sennott represents a bridge of the gang, a tale-end millennial with a knack for bridging different age groups).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
Parallels to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott readily acknowledges an admirer, citing it in addition to Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as guides for I Love LA, which follows the journey of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and fledgling representative Maia. Perhaps, the biggest influence on creative vision was reserved for the HBO series, the program about an up-and-coming Hollywood star navigating in a corrupt LA scene (notable statement: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott began viewing it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and resolved to create a new version on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she explains. The concept for the series came—partly—from her own, at first difficult, move to Tinseltown and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about occurrence for followers. This represented a phase that saw her learn significant truths, professionally and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Starting Out
Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott began creating and acting comedy while studying performance at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, performing at live shows with Edebiri and sharing hilarious (and decidedly) bizarre online content online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically obsessed with motherhood; a different one imagined being employed at a trendy retail outlet as like being trapped in a scary movie. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and ended up appearing in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a religious event with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her path, she notes, has been peers offering opportunities, instead of traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she repeats, stating humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Rising Success
Individuals who were skeptical regarding her previously will surely be regretting it today. Through she labels a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she seems to have achieved an ideal role. In 2019 she uploaded content called on LA life on the internet, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a series about Angelenos juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being labeled as being a drug-addled thief, and potentially becoming a risky pariah). It would be easy to produce a program about online fame that was overly idealized—or, worse, one that mocked at those depicted. I Love LA does neither, making for a depiction of advantaged young adult living that’s honest about the mess and the appeal.
Nuanced Portrayal
“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” 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
