Rachel Sennott enters the video call and right away begins an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, appearing genuinely regretful. She is only slightly late, she needs to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, in this context, that’s just what one hopes to experience. Moreover, it’s pretty unsurprising. Viewers familiar with the boldly LGBTQ+ and brash film titled Bottoms—which Sennott penned with her creative partner and starred in together with collaborator The Bear’s standout—can already know that Sennott holds plenty to say, be it on gender, intimacy, or the pros of starting a teen fight club. Furthermore, once you finish the new seasonal program titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she has additional insights about the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott is a bridge of the gang, straddling eras adept for straddling both generations).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and the actress readily acknowledges an admirer, referencing it in addition to the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and the innovative program as inspirations for her series, which follows the struggles of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and aspiring representative Maia. Notably, the biggest influence on the moodboard belonged to the popular sitcom, that program focusing on an emerging celebrity navigating in a corrupt entertainment industry (notable statement: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She began viewing it during lockdown, became “hooked”, and resolved to put her own twist 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 idea for I Love LA emerged—in part—from her own, at first difficult, transition to LA and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about phenomenon for enthusiasts. That period marked a phase that saw her learn significant truths, 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. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Humble Origins
Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott began developing and showcasing comedy while pursuing performance at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she explains. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “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 open mics with her friend and uploading hilarious (and decidedly) unconventional online content digitally. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted characters fetishistically obsessed with motherhood; another portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as akin to being trapped in a scary movie. By chance, she connected with Emma through campus film circles and eventually appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a religious event with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her journey, she explains, has been peers offering opportunities, rather than traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she confirms, adding humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Those who were skeptical regarding Sennott earlier will surely be kicking themselves currently. Through she calls a “incredibly circular” development, she seems to have created the perfect project. Previously she shared a clip named about Los Angeles on social media, in which she parodied film promos (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about Angelenos managing benefits of online celebrity (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled thief, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). One might simple to make a program about internet celebrity that was extremely idealized—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at its subjects. This show does neither, resulting in a representation of privileged twentysomething existence that’s honest about the chaos and the shine.
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 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
