Rachel Sennott appears on the digital interview and right away launches into an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, sounding genuinely remorseful. Despite being only slightly delayed, she wants to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, during an interview, this is exactly what is ideal to experience. Additionally, it’s quite predictable. Viewers who know her boldly queer and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—which she penned with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside close companion The Bear’s standout—can already know that she holds much to discuss, ranging from on identity, relationships, or the appeal of creating a teen fight club. Plus, by the end the recent seasonal HBO series titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star has further insights regarding the darker side of Gen Z life (At 30, she represents an honorary member for this generation, on the cusp adept for connecting different age groups).
Inspirations and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and Sennott is an admirer, referencing the show in addition to the HBO hit, the acclaimed comedy and the innovative program as influences for I Love LA, which details the journey of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and ally and aspiring talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the biggest influence on creative vision belonged to the popular sitcom, that HBO sitcom focusing on an up-and-coming Hollywood star making his way in a corrupt entertainment industry (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She started watching it throughout the pandemic, became “captivated”, and chose to add a fresh perspective on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The concept for the series emerged—partly—from firsthand, at first difficult, transition to Los Angeles and from her saturn return, a popular occurrence for enthusiasts. It was a phase that saw her grasp major truths, work-wise and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Starting Out
Growing up in Connecticut, Sennott started developing and showcasing humor while enrolled in acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, appearing at open mics with her friend and sharing hysterical (and very) unconventional online content digitally. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on several females intensely fixated on having babies; a different one envisioned being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being stuck in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and eventually featuring in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a religious event with hints of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her journey, she notes, has been peers supporting her, instead of established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, adding amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Rising Success
Anyone who questioned regarding her then will surely be feeling foolish today. In what she describes as a “wild, full-circle” development, she appears to achieved the perfect project. In 2019 she shared a clip titled about Los Angeles on social media, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a series about Angelenos juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your associate being labeled as being a drug-addled thief, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). It would be tempting to make a series about digital influence that was extremely glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at the characters. The series steers clear of each, creating a depiction of advantaged twentysomething existence that’s frank about the mess and the appeal.
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
