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Rachel Sennott joins the digital interview and right away starts an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, sounding really regretful. She is only a couple of minutes behind, she feels compelled to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Thankfully, in this context, that’s precisely what is ideal to hear. Besides, it’s quite predictable. Anyone who have seen her fearlessly queer and unapologetically crass movie titled Bottoms—which she collaborated on with Emma Seligman and featured in with her friend the talented actress—can be aware that she has plenty to say, whether on roles, intimacy, or the merits of creating a youth brawl society. Furthermore, after watching the latest seasonal show titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star has even more insights regarding the darker side of Gen Z life (At 30, Sennott represents an honorary member to younger audiences, straddling eras adept for straddling millennials and Gen Z).

Influences and Storytelling Approach

Likenesses to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott is enthusiastic, referencing it in addition to Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and the innovative program as influences for the project, which tracks the travails of an influencer Tallulah and close companion who is also fledgling talent manager Maia. However, the most significant influence on creative vision belonged to the HBO series, that program focusing on an up-and-coming Hollywood star navigating in an often-seedy entertainment industry (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott began viewing it throughout the pandemic, became “captivated”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective 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 inspiration for I Love LA emerged—partly—from personal, at first fractious, transition to Tinseltown and from her cosmic event, a much-talked-about event for enthusiasts. It was a time that saw her understand major life lessons, work-wise and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”

Early Beginnings

Growing up in New England, the star started creating and acting comedy while enrolled in performance at NYU’s Tisch. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”

She seized control, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and sharing hysterical (and decidedly) bizarre skits on the internet. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females fetishistically obsessed with pregnancy; a different one portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as akin to being caught in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually starring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her career, she notes, has been peers giving her a shot, as opposed to traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, continuing humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”

Rising Success

Those who were skeptical regarding Sennott then will certainly be kicking themselves today. In what she labels a “astonishingly complete” story, she has manifested an ideal role. Previously she shared a video called “it’s LA” on social media, in which she mocked film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a series about city dwellers balancing benefits of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your client being labeled as being a substance-abusing thief, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). One might easy to create a program about digital influence that was extremely aspirational—or, worse, one that belittled at those depicted. The series does neither, resulting in a depiction of affluent millennial life that’s frank about the grot and the appeal.

Empathetic Approach

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