The actress and writer on her uproarious show portraying the grotty glamour of younger generation existence
Rachel Sennott appears on the digital interview and right away starts an apology. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, appearing truly apologetic. Although she's only a bit late, she wants to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, during an interview, that’s precisely what is ideal to experience. Moreover, it’s pretty unsurprising. Those familiar with the unapologetically queer and brash film Bottoms—which Sennott collaborated on with the director and appeared in with close companion Ayo Edebiri—can be aware that she has a lot to share, whether about identity, sex, or the pros of starting a teen fight club. And, after watching the new multi-episode HBO series titled I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has additional perspectives on the darker side of young adulthood (As a millennial, she serves as an honorary member of the gang, on the cusp adept for bridging different age groups).
Influences and Creative Vision
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and Sennott is an admirer, naming it together with Sex and the City, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as influences for I Love LA, which details the struggles of a social media star Tallulah and close companion who is also new agent Maia. However, the most significant influence on creative vision belonged to the HBO series, the show depicting an up-and-coming A-list actor succeeding in a corrupt LA scene (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it during lockdown, became “captivated”, and resolved to create a new version 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 notes. The idea for I Love LA emerged—to some extent—from her own, at first difficult, transition to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. It was an era that included her understand significant life lessons, in her career and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Early Beginnings
Brought up in New England, the star started creating and acting comedy while studying performance at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she says. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “None of the university plays cast me either.” “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
She decided to act independently, appearing at open mics with Edebiri and sharing hilarious (and very) unconventional skits on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically obsessed with pregnancy; another portrayed working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being trapped in a horror film. By chance, she connected with Seligman through campus film circles and ended up featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a religious event with echoes of Uncut Gems. A recurring idea of her path, she says, has been contemporaries supporting her, as opposed to established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, adding humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who had doubts about her then will surely be regretting it now. As part of she calls a “wild, full-circle” development, she has created the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded a video named about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she mocked film promos (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a show about LA residents juggling benefits of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your associate being accused of being a intoxicated thief, and perhaps becoming a risky outcast). One might easy to create a series about internet celebrity that was overly glamorous—or, more problematic, one that mocked at the characters. I Love LA steers clear of each, resulting in a representation of privileged millennial existence that’s honest about the chaos and the glamour.
Nuanced Portrayal
“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
