🔗 Share this article

Rachel Sennott enters the digital interview and immediately starts an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, appearing genuinely remorseful. Despite being only a couple of minutes behind, she feels compelled 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!” Thankfully, during an interview, this is exactly what one hopes to hear. Additionally, it’s fairly unsurprising. Viewers familiar with the boldly LGBTQ+ and brash movie titled Bottoms—that she penned with Emma Seligman and appeared in together with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—can already know that Sennott has plenty to say, ranging from on identity, relationships, or the merits of forming a high-school combat group. Plus, by the end her new multi-episode program titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star holds additional insights about the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, she represents an honorary member of the gang, on the cusp with a knack for connecting different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction

Parallels to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show naturally arise and Sennott admits to being an admirer, citing it alongside the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as guides for the project, which follows the struggles of online personality Tallulah and close companion who is also fledgling talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the biggest spot on concept went to the HBO series, the show about an emerging celebrity navigating in an often-seedy entertainment industry (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it throughout COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and resolved to create a new version on it “for the girls and the gays”.

“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she notes. The inspiration for the series emerged—partly—from her own, initially difficult, relocation to Los Angeles and from the saturn return, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. This represented a time that saw her understand significant insights, work-wise and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”

Starting Out

Brought up in the East Coast, Sennott began developing and showcasing stand-up while pursuing theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she says. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

Sennott decided to act independently, performing at amateur nights with Edebiri and posting uproarious (and distinctly) unconventional comedy videos digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on characters intensely fixated on motherhood; a different one envisioned being employed at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being trapped in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through campus film circles and ended up starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a funeral gathering with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her path, she explains, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, stating amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Career Breakthrough

Those who were skeptical regarding Sennott earlier will surely be feeling foolish currently. In what she calls a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she has achieved the perfect project. Previously she shared content titled on LA life online, in which she lampooned Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a series about Angelenos juggling advantages of internet fame (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your associate being labeled as being a drug-addled criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable persona non grata). It would be tempting to make a show about online fame that was overly glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that mocked at those depicted. This show steers clear of each, resulting in a depiction of affluent twentysomething life that’s frank about the chaos 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 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