🔗 Share this article

Rachel Sennott enters the video call and at once launches into an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, seeming really regretful. Despite being only a couple of minutes behind, she wants to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, during an interview, this is exactly what is ideal to hear. Besides, it’s fairly unsurprising. Anyone who know her unapologetically queer and outspoken project titled Bottoms—which Sennott penned with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside close companion The Bear’s standout—can be aware that she holds much to share, be it about roles, intimacy, or the appeal of creating a teen fight club. Plus, once you finish the new seasonal HBO series I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star has further thoughts about the darker side of Gen Z life (As a millennial, she serves as a relatable figure for this generation, straddling eras adept for bridging both generations).

Inspirations and Storytelling Approach

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show naturally arise and the actress is an admirer, naming it alongside the HBO hit, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for the project, which details the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion who is also aspiring agent Sennott’s character. Notably, the largest spot on the moodboard went to the HBO series, the HBO sitcom focusing on an up-and-coming Hollywood star navigating in a gritty Hollywood (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it amid lockdown, became “captivated”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.

“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she notes. The inspiration for this project originated—to some extent—from her own, initially fractious, transition to LA and from the saturn return, a much-talked-about phenomenon for astrology heads. This represented a phase that involved her grasp major insights, work-wise and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” 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

Brought up in New England, Sennott began writing and performing stand-up while enrolled in theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”

She took matters into her own hands, appearing at amateur nights with Ayo and sharing hysterical (and very) bizarre comedy videos digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on characters fetishistically drawn to pregnancy; another envisioned being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being caught in a thriller. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through the university’s film scene and ended up appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a religious event with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her journey, she explains, has been contemporaries supporting her, instead of traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, stating humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Rising Success

Anyone who were skeptical regarding Sennott earlier will surely be regretting it now. Through she describes as a “wild, full-circle” story, she seems to have created her dream vehicle. A few years back she shared content called “it’s LA” on social media, in which she parodied film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a show about Angelenos balancing advantages of online celebrity (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your associate being suspected of being a substance-abusing thief, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). Some could easy to make a series about internet celebrity that was horribly idealized—or, more problematic, one that belittled at those depicted. I Love LA avoids both, resulting in a representation of affluent millennial existence that’s frank about the mess and the glamour.

Empathetic Approach

“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” she comments. “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