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Rachel Sennott enters the online meeting and immediately starts an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, seeming truly remorseful. Despite being only slightly behind, she feels compelled to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Luckily, for a writer, that’s just what you want to encounter. Additionally, it’s pretty unsurprising. Anyone who know the fearlessly queer and unapologetically crass movie Bottoms—which Sennott co-wrote with Emma Seligman and starred in together with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—can already know that she holds a lot to share, be it about roles, intimacy, or the appeal of starting a youth fight club. Furthermore, by the end the new seasonal show titled I Love LA, viewers realize that the star holds even more thoughts about the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott represents a bridge for this generation, a tale-end millennial adept for bridging both generations).

Influences and Artistic Direction

Parallels to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and the actress is an admirer, referencing the show alongside Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as guides for I Love LA, which tracks the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and new agent Sennott’s character. However, the largest presence on creative vision was reserved for the popular sitcom, that HBO sitcom about an up-and-coming celebrity making his way in a gritty entertainment industry (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it throughout the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose to add a fresh perspective 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 firsthand, initially fractious, move to LA and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about event for followers. It was an era that included her understand some big truths, in her career and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” It was almost like these biblical tests …”

Early Beginnings

Brought up in New England, Sennott began writing and performing humor while studying theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she explains. “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 seized control, taking the stage at live shows with Ayo and sharing uproarious (and decidedly) unconventional comedy videos digitally. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed characters intensely drawn to having babies; another envisioned being employed at the brand Hollister as like being stuck in a thriller. By chance, she connected with Seligman through campus film circles and ended up featuring in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a religious event with hints of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her career, she notes, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, as opposed to traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, continuing humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Rising Success

Anyone who had doubts about Sennott earlier will likely be regretting it today. In what she calls a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she seems to have manifested the perfect project. Previously she uploaded a video titled about Los Angeles on social media, in which she parodied movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a comedy about city dwellers juggling the perks of digital stardom (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your associate being labeled as being a drug-addled thief, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). It would be easy to produce a series about digital influence that was horribly aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that mocked at the characters. I Love LA avoids both, resulting in a representation of affluent young adult living that’s honest about the mess and the shine.

Empathetic Approach

“Many programs portray youth and online life with disdain and mockery,” 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