Rachel Sennott joins the video call and immediately starts an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, seeming truly apologetic. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she feels compelled to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, for a writer, that’s just what you want to encounter. Besides, it’s quite expected. Those who have seen the fearlessly queer and brash film Bottoms—which she penned with the director and featured in together with close companion Ayo Edebiri—will already know that she has plenty to share, ranging from about roles, intimacy, or the pros of starting a high-school brawl society. Plus, by the end the latest multi-episode program titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she holds further thoughts regarding the darker side of Gen Z life (Now in her thirties, she represents an honorary member for this generation, on the cusp with a knack for connecting different age groups).
Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and Sennott readily acknowledges a fan, citing the show together with the classic series, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as guides for I Love LA, which details the travails of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and aspiring representative Sennott’s character. However, the most significant influence on concept belonged to Entourage, the HBO sitcom about an up-and-coming Hollywood star succeeding in a corrupt LA scene (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott started watching it amid lockdown, became “hooked”, 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 says. The idea for this project came—to some extent—from her own, at first difficult, transition to Tinseltown and from her astrological phase, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. That period marked a phase that involved her grasp significant life lessons, professionally and in private life. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she recalls. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Humble Origins
Growing up in the East Coast, Sennott began creating and acting comedy while enrolled in performance at a prestigious arts school. “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. “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 Ayo and uploading uproarious (and distinctly) unconventional online content on the internet. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females obsessively obsessed with motherhood; another envisioned working at the brand Hollister as similar to being trapped in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ended up starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of Uncut Gems. The central motif of her career, she explains, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, as opposed to established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, adding with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who had doubts about Sennott earlier will surely be kicking themselves now. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she appears to created an ideal role. A few years back she shared a clip called on LA life on the internet, 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 comedy about LA residents managing the perks of digital stardom (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your associate being accused of being a substance-abusing criminal, and perhaps becoming a risky outcast). It would be easy to make a series about internet celebrity that was overly idealized—or, more problematic, one that punched down at its subjects. This show does neither, creating a depiction of privileged twentysomething existence that’s candid about the mess and the glamour.
Balanced Perspective
“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
