Rachel Sennott appears on the online meeting and right away starts an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, appearing genuinely remorseful. She is only a couple of minutes late, she feels compelled to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, during an interview, that’s just what is ideal to encounter. Moreover, it’s pretty predictable. Anyone who know the fearlessly LGBTQ+ and unapologetically crass movie Bottoms—that Sennott collaborated on with her creative partner and featured in together with close companion Ayo Edebiri—will already know that she holds much to discuss, ranging from on gender, intimacy, or the pros of forming a high-school combat group. Furthermore, by the end her new eight-part HBO series I Love LA, viewers realize that she carries further insights about the struggles of young adulthood (At 30, Sennott serves as a relatable figure for this generation, on the cusp adept for bridging different age groups).
Influences and Artistic Direction
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress is an admirer, naming it alongside the HBO hit, Insecure and Atlanta as inspirations for her series, which tracks the struggles of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also new talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the most significant influence on the moodboard went to Entourage, that program depicting an emerging A-list actor navigating in a gritty LA scene (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott started watching it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she notes. The concept for the series came—partly—from firsthand, at first fractious, relocation to Los Angeles and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about phenomenon for enthusiasts. It was an era that involved her understand some big truths, in her career and personally. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Humble Origins
Brought up in New England, the star commenced creating and acting stand-up while pursuing acting at a prestigious arts school. “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. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at live shows with Ayo and posting hysterical (and distinctly) unconventional online content digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, followed characters intensely drawn to motherhood; another imagined working at the brand Hollister as similar to being caught in a horror film. By chance, she encountered Seligman through campus film circles and ended up starring in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her career, she notes, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, instead of established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, continuing amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Rising Success
Individuals who were skeptical regarding her then will certainly be regretting it now. In what she describes as a “wild, full-circle” story, she appears to created the perfect project. A few years back she posted content named “it’s LA” online, in which she lampooned movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a series about LA residents juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your client being suspected of being a intoxicated stealer, and potentially becoming a risky pariah). Some could easy to create a program about digital influence that was overly glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at its subjects. This show steers clear of each, making for a depiction of privileged young adult existence that’s candid about the chaos and the shine.
Nuanced Portrayal
“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” 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