Rachel Sennott joins the online meeting and immediately launches into an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, appearing really apologetic. She is only a couple of minutes late, she wants to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, during an interview, this is just what you want to experience. Additionally, it’s quite unsurprising. Anyone who have seen the fearlessly openly gay and outspoken project titled Bottoms—that she co-wrote with the director and appeared in together with close companion Ayo Edebiri—will understand that Sennott holds much to share, be it on gender, sex, or the pros of forming a high-school combat group. Furthermore, by the end the new seasonal HBO series I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she carries even more insights regarding the struggles of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott serves as a bridge for this generation, a tale-end millennial adept for connecting different age groups).
Influences and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, naming the show alongside Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and the innovative program as inspirations for her series, which tracks the struggles of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and ally and new talent manager Sennott’s character. Notably, the biggest presence on the moodboard belonged to Entourage, the show about an up-and-coming A-list actor navigating in a gritty LA scene (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott started watching it amid COVID-19, became “captivated”, and resolved to create a new version 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 explains. The concept for this project originated—to some extent—from firsthand, originally fractious, move to LA and from the astrological phase, a popular phenomenon for enthusiasts. This represented a time that involved her learn some big truths, work-wise and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Humble Origins
Brought up in Connecticut, the star began creating and acting comedy while studying performance at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she says. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “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, performing at open mics with her friend and uploading uproarious (and decidedly) unconventional skits on the internet. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females intensely fixated on motherhood; another envisioned working at the brand Hollister as akin to being stuck in a horror film. By chance, she met Seligman through the university’s film scene and ultimately featuring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a Jewish wake with hints of the intense thriller. The big theme of her career, she says, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, as opposed to established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Not the gatekeepers”, she confirms, stating with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who questioned about Sennott earlier will certainly be regretting it today. In what she labels a “incredibly circular” story, she seems to have manifested the perfect project. Previously she uploaded a clip named “it’s LA” online, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a series about LA residents managing benefits of internet fame (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being labeled as being a intoxicated thief, and possibly becoming a risky pariah). One might easy to make a series about internet celebrity that was overly aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at the characters. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a depiction of affluent twentysomething life that’s honest 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 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
