Rachel Sennott appears on the video call and at once begins an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she states, sounding really remorseful. Although she's only a couple of minutes late, she wants to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, during an interview, this is exactly what you want to encounter. Additionally, it’s fairly unsurprising. Viewers who have seen her fearlessly LGBTQ+ and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—that she co-wrote with the director and appeared in alongside close companion The Bear’s standout—will be aware that Sennott possesses plenty to say, whether about roles, sex, or the appeal of starting a teen combat group. And, once you finish her recent eight-part show titled I Love LA, it is clear that she has additional thoughts regarding the darker side of Gen Z life (At 30, she is a relatable figure to younger audiences, straddling eras adept for connecting different age groups).
Influences and Artistic Direction
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and the actress readily acknowledges a fan, naming it together with Sex and the City, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as influences for the project, which details the struggles of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also new representative Sennott’s character. However, the biggest spot on concept was reserved for the HBO series, that show depicting an up-and-coming celebrity succeeding in a corrupt Hollywood (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott discovered it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she notes. The idea for this project emerged—in part—from her own, at first difficult, transition to Los Angeles and from the saturn return, a frequently discussed occurrence for followers. It was a time that involved her grasp major truths, in her career and in private life. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Early Beginnings
Raised in New England, Sennott began writing and performing humor while pursuing acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “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.” I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
She took matters into her own hands, appearing at live shows with Edebiri and uploading hilarious (and decidedly) weird skits on the internet. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on characters intensely drawn to motherhood; another envisioned being employed at a trendy retail outlet as like being caught in a scary movie. By chance, she connected with Emma through NYU’s movie community and ultimately featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a funeral gathering with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her career, she explains, has been peers supporting her, rather than established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she confirms, stating humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Manifesting Dreams
Those who questioned about Sennott earlier will certainly be feeling foolish today. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” development, she seems to have achieved the perfect project. A few years back she uploaded a clip named “it’s LA” online, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a show about LA residents managing benefits of digital stardom (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your client being accused of being a drug-addled thief, and perhaps becoming a risky persona non grata). Some could tempting to create a program about internet celebrity that was overly glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at those depicted. This show does neither, creating a portrait of advantaged millennial life that’s frank about the grot and the glamour.
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 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
