Rachel Sennott joins the online meeting and right away launches into an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, sounding truly remorseful. Although she's only a couple of minutes delayed, she wants to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, for a writer, this is exactly what you want to experience. Besides, it’s pretty predictable. Anyone who have seen her fearlessly LGBTQ+ and brash project Bottoms—which she co-wrote with Emma Seligman and appeared in with her friend Ayo Edebiri—would already know that Sennott holds plenty to discuss, be it on identity, intimacy, or the merits of starting a teen brawl society. Plus, once you finish the new multi-episode program I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she holds even more thoughts about the struggles of modern youth (As a millennial, Sennott serves as a bridge of the gang, on the cusp with a knack for connecting both generations).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress admits to being a fan, referencing the show alongside the classic series, Issa Rae’s show and the innovative program as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the travails of a social media star Tallulah and close companion who is also new agent Maia. However, the largest presence on concept belonged to Entourage, that HBO sitcom focusing on a rising Hollywood star making his way in a corrupt LA scene (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, 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 inspiration for I Love LA came—to some extent—from her own, originally difficult, move to Los Angeles and from the astrological phase, a frequently discussed occurrence for followers. This represented a time that included her grasp some big truths, in her career and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “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…”
Early Beginnings
Growing up in New England, Sennott commenced developing and showcasing stand-up while pursuing acting at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she says. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott decided to act independently, performing at amateur nights with Ayo and sharing uproarious (and distinctly) bizarre online content on the internet. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females fetishistically obsessed with having babies; a different one imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being stuck in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Seligman through the university’s film scene and ended up appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a funeral gathering with shades of Uncut Gems. The central motif of her path, she notes, has been people her own age supporting her, rather than traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, stating with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Rising Success
Those who had doubts regarding her earlier will certainly be regretting it currently. Through she labels a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she appears to created an ideal role. Previously she posted a video titled on LA life on social media, in which she mocked movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about city dwellers balancing the perks of online celebrity (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being accused of being a intoxicated thief, and potentially becoming a unreliable pariah). One might tempting to create a program about digital influence that was overly idealized—or, worse, one that belittled at its subjects. This show does neither, making for a representation of privileged twentysomething existence that’s frank 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
