Rachel Sennott enters the video call and right away starts an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, seeming genuinely regretful. Despite being only a couple of minutes late, she wants to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, in this context, this is just what is ideal to experience. Moreover, it’s quite unsurprising. Those who know her fearlessly queer and brash film Bottoms—that she co-wrote with the director and starred in together with her friend Ayo Edebiri—can already know that Sennott possesses much to say, be it about gender, relationships, or the pros of creating a youth combat group. Furthermore, after watching her new eight-part show I Love LA, it is clear that the star holds further perspectives regarding the darker side of modern youth (As a millennial, she serves as an honorary member for this generation, on the cusp skilled for connecting both generations).
Guiding Lights and Creative Vision
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott is enthusiastic, naming it together with Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as inspirations for the project, which follows the journey of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and new talent manager Maia. However, the biggest spot on the moodboard belonged to the HBO series, the show depicting a rising celebrity making his way in a gritty LA scene (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it amid COVID-19, became “hooked”, and resolved to create a new version on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The inspiration for I Love LA came—to some extent—from her own, at first rocky, move to LA and from the astrological phase, a much-talked-about event for followers. That period marked a time that involved her grasp significant insights, in her career and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she recalls. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Humble Origins
Brought up in the East Coast, Sennott commenced writing and performing stand-up while studying performance at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “None of the university plays cast me either.” And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, performing at amateur nights with Edebiri and posting hysterical (and decidedly) bizarre skits online. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed several females intensely fixated on motherhood; a different one portrayed being employed at a trendy retail outlet as like being stuck in a thriller. Interestingly, she connected with Seligman through the university’s film scene and ultimately appearing in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her journey, she says, has been peers supporting her, instead of the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, adding amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who had doubts about her previously will surely be feeling foolish today. As part of she describes as a “incredibly circular” development, she seems to have created an ideal role. In 2019 she uploaded content named “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she parodied movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a series about city dwellers juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being accused of being a substance-abusing criminal, and possibly becoming a risky pariah). One might easy to create a show about digital influence that was overly idealized—or, worse, one that belittled at those depicted. I Love LA steers clear of each, resulting in a portrait of advantaged young adult existence that’s honest about the chaos and the shine.
Nuanced Portrayal
“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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
