The actress and writer on the hilarious series depicting the grotty appeal of today's youth lifestyle
Rachel Sennott enters the digital interview and at once begins an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, sounding truly regretful. Despite being only a bit late, she needs to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, in this context, this is precisely what one hopes to hear. Besides, it’s pretty unsurprising. Viewers who have seen her boldly queer and outspoken movie Bottoms—which Sennott penned with her creative partner and featured in with her friend the talented actress—will understand that she possesses plenty to say, whether about gender, sex, or the pros of starting a teen brawl society. And, once you finish the recent multi-episode program I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star holds further insights on the darker side of Gen Z life (At 30, Sennott is a relatable figure to younger audiences, straddling eras adept for connecting millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Creative Vision
Parallels to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott admits to being a fan, citing it in addition to Sex and the City, Insecure and Atlanta as inspirations for her series, which details the struggles of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and new representative Maia. However, the most significant presence on creative vision belonged to the HBO series, the show about a rising Hollywood star navigating in an often-seedy LA scene (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it throughout COVID-19, became “hooked”, and chose 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 idea for I Love LA emerged—in part—from her own, at first fractious, transition to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed occurrence for followers. It was an era that involved her understand significant truths, work-wise and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Early Beginnings
Growing up in Connecticut, the star began creating and acting stand-up while pursuing theatre at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” 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. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She decided to act independently, performing at amateur nights with her friend and uploading hilarious (and distinctly) bizarre skits on the internet. One, titled Baby Cult, followed a group of women intensely fixated on having babies; a different one imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being caught in a horror film. By chance, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and ended up featuring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a funeral gathering with hints of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her path, she explains, has been contemporaries supporting her, instead of traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, stating humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Rising Success
Those who were skeptical about her earlier will surely be feeling foolish today. In what she describes as a “wild, full-circle” story, she has created the perfect project. In 2019 she posted content named about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she lampooned film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s executive producer (with the co-writer) of a series about LA residents managing advantages of internet fame (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being labeled as being a intoxicated criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable outcast). It would be simple to make a program about internet celebrity that was horribly idealized—or, more problematic, one that mocked at those depicted. This show does neither, creating a portrait of privileged young adult existence that’s honest about the chaos and the shine.
Empathetic Approach
“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
