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Rachel Sennott appears on the digital interview and right away begins an apology. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, seeming really regretful. Although she's only slightly behind, she wants to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, during an interview, this is precisely what you want to experience. Besides, it’s quite predictable. Viewers who know the boldly queer and brash project Bottoms—which Sennott co-wrote with the director and appeared in together with her friend the talented actress—would understand that she has plenty to discuss, ranging from about gender, sex, or the merits of creating a high-school fight club. Plus, once you finish her latest eight-part show I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she carries additional perspectives on the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott represents a bridge for this generation, on the cusp skilled for straddling millennials and Gen Z).

Inspirations and Creative Vision

The comparisons to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and the actress is a fan, citing it alongside Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and the innovative program as influences for her series, which details the struggles of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion who is also fledgling agent Maia. Perhaps, the most significant influence on the moodboard went to the HBO series, the show about a rising Hollywood star navigating in a corrupt LA scene (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it during the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and decided to add a fresh perspective on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.

“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 came—partly—from personal, initially difficult, relocation to LA and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about occurrence for astrology heads. That period marked a phase that included her learn some big life lessons, work-wise and individually. “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…”

Humble Origins

Brought up in Connecticut, the star commenced creating and acting comedy while pursuing performance at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she states. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

Sennott took matters into her own hands, appearing at amateur nights with Edebiri and posting hysterical (and very) unconventional comedy videos online. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted a group of women obsessively fixated on motherhood; a different one imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being stuck in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ultimately featuring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a Jewish wake with hints of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her journey, she explains, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, rather than the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, adding humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Rising Success

Individuals who questioned about Sennott previously will certainly be feeling foolish now. Through she describes as a “astonishingly complete” story, she seems to have manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded a video titled “it’s LA” online, in which she lampooned movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a show about Angelenos juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your client being accused of being a drug-addled stealer, and perhaps becoming a unreliable persona non grata). It would be easy to produce a show about digital influence that was overly glamorous—or, more problematic, one that punched down at those depicted. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a portrait of affluent millennial existence that’s frank about the grot and the appeal.

Balanced Perspective

“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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