Rachel Sennott enters the online meeting and right away launches into an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, seeming genuinely apologetic. She is only slightly late, she feels compelled to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Fortunately, for a writer, that’s precisely what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s fairly predictable. Those who have seen the boldly openly gay and brash film Bottoms—that she collaborated on with the director and starred in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—will already know that she has plenty to discuss, be it on roles, sex, or the appeal of forming a high-school fight club. Furthermore, after watching the latest seasonal program I Love LA, it is clear that she has additional thoughts regarding the struggles of Gen Z life (At 30, Sennott represents a bridge for this generation, straddling eras skilled for connecting millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Creative Vision
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and the actress is an admirer, naming it together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as influences for the project, which tracks the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and aspiring agent Maia. However, the largest presence on creative vision was reserved for Entourage, the show focusing on a rising celebrity succeeding in a gritty entertainment industry (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott started watching it during COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and decided to create a new version on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she notes. The concept for this project came—partly—from personal, originally fractious, move to Los Angeles and from the saturn return, a frequently discussed event for followers. It was an era that involved her grasp some big truths, 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. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Starting Out
Brought up in New England, the star started creating and acting comedy while studying theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “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.”
She decided to act independently, appearing at amateur nights with Ayo and sharing hysterical (and distinctly) unconventional skits online. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females fetishistically fixated on having babies; another portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as akin to being stuck in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Emma through NYU’s movie community and ended up appearing in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the intense thriller. The central motif of her journey, she explains, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, adding with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Career Breakthrough
Those who had doubts about Sennott previously will surely be kicking themselves now. As part of she labels a “wild, full-circle” story, she has manifested the perfect project. A few years back she uploaded a clip called “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she lampooned movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s executive producer (with the co-writer) of a series about LA residents juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being labeled as being a substance-abusing stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). Some could tempting to produce a series about online fame that was extremely glamorous—or, more problematic, one that mocked at its subjects. I Love LA does neither, creating a representation of affluent millennial existence that’s honest about the chaos and the shine.
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
