Rachel Sennott enters the online meeting and right away starts an apology. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, sounding truly regretful. Despite being only a couple of minutes late, she needs to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, for a writer, this is just what you want to experience. Moreover, it’s fairly expected. Viewers who know the boldly queer and unapologetically crass movie Bottoms—that she co-wrote with Emma Seligman and appeared in alongside close companion Ayo Edebiri—can be aware that Sennott has plenty to say, ranging from on identity, intimacy, or the pros of creating a high-school fight club. Furthermore, once you finish the latest eight-part HBO series titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star has additional insights regarding the struggles of Gen Z life (As a millennial, she represents a bridge for this generation, straddling eras adept for connecting millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Creative Vision
Parallels to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and the actress readily acknowledges an admirer, naming the show alongside Sex and the City, Insecure and Atlanta as influences for her series, which details the journey of a social media star Tallulah and her friend and new representative Sennott’s character. Notably, the biggest influence on concept was reserved for Entourage, that HBO sitcom focusing on an up-and-coming celebrity navigating in an often-seedy Hollywood (memorable line: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott began viewing it amid the pandemic, became “hooked”, and decided 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 inspiration for the series originated—to some extent—from firsthand, initially rocky, relocation to LA and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed event for astrology heads. This represented a time that involved her understand some big truths, work-wise and personally. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” 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…”
Early Beginnings
Brought up in Connecticut, the star began developing and showcasing stand-up while pursuing performance at a prestigious arts school. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She took matters into her own hands, appearing at live shows with Edebiri and uploading hysterical (and very) bizarre online content digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females intensely obsessed with motherhood; a different one envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as like being trapped in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Seligman through campus film circles and ended up starring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a religious event with shades of the intense thriller. The big theme of her path, she explains, has been peers offering opportunities, instead of established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, adding with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who were skeptical regarding Sennott then will certainly be kicking themselves now. In what she describes as a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she appears to manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded a clip titled about Los Angeles online, in which she parodied film promos (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a comedy about LA residents juggling the perks of internet fame (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being suspected of being a substance-abusing criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable outcast). One might simple to make a program about internet celebrity that was horribly idealized—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at its subjects. This show avoids both, resulting in a representation of affluent millennial life that’s frank about the mess and the appeal.
Balanced Perspective
“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
