🔗 Share this article

Rachel Sennott appears on the online meeting and at once starts an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, sounding genuinely regretful. Despite being only a couple of minutes late, she wants to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Luckily, during an interview, that’s just what is ideal to hear. Besides, it’s pretty predictable. Viewers familiar with her boldly queer and unapologetically crass project titled Bottoms—that she penned with Emma Seligman and appeared in together with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—will understand that Sennott holds plenty to share, ranging from about identity, relationships, or the pros of starting a high-school fight club. Furthermore, by the end her new seasonal show I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star carries further insights on the struggles of modern youth (As a millennial, she represents a relatable figure to younger audiences, on the cusp adept for bridging different age groups).

Inspirations and Artistic Direction

Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, referencing it in addition to Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Atlanta as inspirations for I Love LA, which follows the struggles of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and new representative Sennott’s character. However, the most significant presence on the moodboard belonged to the HBO series, that program depicting an emerging Hollywood star making his way in a gritty LA scene (memorable line: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She started watching it throughout COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and chose to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.

“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she notes. The idea for this project originated—in part—from firsthand, at first fractious, relocation to LA and from her astrological phase, a frequently discussed phenomenon for enthusiasts. It was a phase that included her understand significant life lessons, in her career and personally. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Early Beginnings

Raised in New England, the star began writing and performing stand-up while enrolled in theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “None of the university plays cast me either.” And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”

Sennott decided to act independently, performing at open mics with Edebiri and posting hilarious (and distinctly) unconventional comedy videos digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females obsessively fixated on having babies; a different one portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as like being trapped in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and ultimately featuring in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a Jewish wake with shades of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her journey, she notes, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, rather than traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, adding amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Manifesting Dreams

Anyone who were skeptical about her then will certainly be feeling foolish today. Through she describes as a “astonishingly complete” story, she appears to achieved the perfect project. A few years back she shared a clip titled on LA life on the internet, in which she lampooned Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s executive producer (with Emma Barrie) of a comedy about city dwellers balancing advantages of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your friend being labeled as being a drug-addled thief, and possibly becoming a risky persona non grata). Some could easy to produce a series about internet celebrity that was horribly aspirational—or, worse, one that mocked at those depicted. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a depiction of affluent twentysomething life that’s honest about the chaos and the glamour.

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