Rachel Sennott joins the digital interview and immediately launches into an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, sounding truly regretful. Despite being only slightly late, she wants to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Fortunately, for a writer, this is exactly what one hopes to encounter. Additionally, it’s pretty unsurprising. Those familiar with the unapologetically queer and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—that she co-wrote with the director and featured in with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—can already know that she possesses plenty to discuss, ranging from on identity, intimacy, or the merits of forming a high-school fight club. Plus, by the end her latest eight-part show titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she has even more thoughts regarding the darker side of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott is a relatable figure of the gang, a tale-end millennial adept for straddling both generations).
Guiding Lights and Creative Vision
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show can’t be avoided and Sennott readily acknowledges a fan, naming it together with the HBO hit, the acclaimed comedy and the innovative program as influences for her series, which details the struggles of a social media star Tallulah and ally and aspiring agent Maia. However, the largest presence on the moodboard went to the popular sitcom, the HBO sitcom about an up-and-coming Hollywood star making his way in a gritty entertainment industry (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She discovered it amid lockdown, became “obsessed”, and resolved to put her own twist 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 explains. The idea for I Love LA originated—in part—from personal, at first fractious, relocation to Tinseltown and from her cosmic event, a much-talked-about phenomenon for followers. That period marked a phase that included her grasp major insights, in her career 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…”
Early Beginnings
Growing up in the East Coast, Sennott began writing and performing comedy 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 states. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” 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.”
Sennott seized control, performing at live shows with Ayo and sharing uproarious (and distinctly) unconventional online content online. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females fetishistically obsessed with motherhood; a different one portrayed working at the brand Hollister as like being stuck in a thriller. By chance, she met Seligman through campus film circles and ultimately starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a Jewish wake with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her journey, she notes, has been contemporaries supporting her, instead of established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, continuing amusedly: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who had doubts about her previously will surely be kicking themselves currently. Through she describes as a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she appears to manifested an ideal role. In 2019 she shared a video called “it’s LA” on social media, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a comedy about Angelenos balancing benefits of digital stardom (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being accused of being a intoxicated thief, and potentially becoming a risky outcast). One might easy to produce a show about internet celebrity that was overly idealized—or, worse, one that belittled at its subjects. This show steers clear of each, resulting in a portrait of advantaged young adult existence that’s honest about the mess and the appeal.
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 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
