Rachel Sennott appears on the digital interview and right away launches into an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, appearing really remorseful. Despite being only a couple of minutes behind, she wants to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, for a writer, this is precisely what is ideal to encounter. Besides, it’s pretty predictable. Anyone familiar with the boldly queer and outspoken film titled Bottoms—that she co-wrote with Emma Seligman and appeared in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—can understand that Sennott possesses a lot to discuss, ranging from on roles, relationships, or the appeal of starting a teen brawl society. Furthermore, once you finish her new seasonal show I Love LA, viewers realize that the star holds further insights about the struggles of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, she represents an honorary member for this generation, on the cusp skilled for connecting different age groups).
Guiding Lights and Creative Vision
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and Sennott is an admirer, citing it together with Sex and the City, Insecure and Atlanta as inspirations for her series, which details the struggles of a social media star Tallulah and her friend and aspiring talent manager portrayed by Sennott. Notably, the largest spot on concept belonged to Entourage, the HBO sitcom depicting an emerging Hollywood star navigating in a gritty entertainment industry (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott discovered it amid COVID-19, became “captivated”, and chose to create a new version on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she explains. The inspiration for I Love LA came—partly—from firsthand, at first fractious, transition to LA and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about occurrence for enthusiasts. It was a phase that included her understand some big truths, professionally and personally. “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. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Starting Out
Raised in New England, the star commenced creating and acting stand-up while studying theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “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. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
She seized control, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and sharing hysterical (and decidedly) bizarre skits online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females obsessively obsessed with pregnancy; a different one envisioned working at the brand Hollister as similar to being stuck in a thriller. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and ended up starring in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a religious event with echoes of the intense thriller. The big theme of her path, she notes, has been peers supporting her, instead of the industry at large. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, adding with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who questioned regarding her then will surely be feeling foolish currently. In what she describes as a “incredibly circular” story, she appears to created an ideal role. In 2019 she uploaded content called on LA life online, in which she mocked movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a comedy about city dwellers juggling benefits of internet fame (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your client being accused of being a intoxicated criminal, and potentially becoming a risky persona non grata). Some could easy to make a program about internet celebrity that was extremely glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at its subjects. This show does neither, resulting in a depiction of advantaged young adult life that’s frank about the grot and the shine.
Empathetic Approach
“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” 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
