Rachel Sennott joins the video call and immediately begins an apology. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, seeming really regretful. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she needs to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, for a writer, this is precisely what you want to hear. Besides, it’s pretty predictable. Those who have seen her fearlessly LGBTQ+ and unapologetically crass film Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with the director and featured in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—can already know that Sennott holds much to discuss, be it on gender, sex, or the merits of starting a high-school brawl society. Plus, once you finish the new eight-part show titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star carries additional perspectives about the challenges of modern youth (Now in her thirties, she is an honorary member of the gang, on the cusp with a knack for straddling both generations).
Influences and Storytelling Approach
Parallels to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott readily acknowledges an admirer, citing it alongside Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as influences for I Love LA, which details the travails of a social media star Tallulah and her friend who is also aspiring talent manager Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the biggest spot on concept went to the HBO series, the show focusing on an emerging Hollywood star succeeding in a corrupt LA scene (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She began viewing it during the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective 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 explains. The idea for this project emerged—to some extent—from personal, at first fractious, move to LA and from the cosmic event, a much-talked-about event for enthusiasts. It was a phase that saw her understand major insights, professionally and in private life. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Starting Out
Growing up in the East Coast, Sennott started writing and performing 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 says. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, appearing at open mics with Edebiri and posting hysterical (and distinctly) weird skits online. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females fetishistically fixated on having babies; another imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being trapped in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she met Emma through the university’s film scene and ultimately featuring in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her career, she says, has been contemporaries supporting her, rather than traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she repeats, adding with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who were skeptical regarding Sennott earlier will likely be kicking themselves now. As part of she labels a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she has created her dream vehicle. A few years back she shared content titled “it’s LA” online, in which she parodied film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a comedy about city dwellers juggling advantages of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being labeled as being a substance-abusing thief, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). Some could tempting to produce a show about online fame that was extremely aspirational—or, more problematic, one that mocked at its subjects. I Love LA avoids both, creating a depiction of affluent young adult living that’s honest about the mess 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 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
