🔗 Share this article

Rachel Sennott joins the online meeting and right away starts an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, sounding truly apologetic. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she wants to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, for a writer, this is exactly what one hopes to hear. Moreover, it’s quite expected. Viewers familiar with the boldly openly gay and outspoken project Bottoms—that she penned with her creative partner and appeared in together with collaborator the talented actress—will understand that she has much to say, ranging from about roles, relationships, or the appeal of starting a teen combat group. Plus, once you finish the new eight-part show titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she has even more perspectives about the darker side of young adulthood (At 30, Sennott represents an honorary member to younger audiences, on the cusp with a knack for bridging both generations).

Inspirations and Artistic Direction

Likenesses to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott readily acknowledges an admirer, citing it in addition to the classic series, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as guides for her series, which tracks the journey of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion who is also new representative portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the largest presence on concept was reserved for Entourage, the show focusing on a rising Hollywood star making his way in an often-seedy entertainment industry (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it during COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and decided 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 explains. The inspiration for the series came—in part—from firsthand, originally difficult, move to Tinseltown and from the saturn return, a popular occurrence for enthusiasts. This represented a phase that involved her grasp major insights, 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…”

Starting Out

Brought up in New England, the star started writing and performing stand-up while studying performance at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”

Sennott took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at live shows with her friend and sharing uproarious (and decidedly) unconventional skits on the internet. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, followed characters fetishistically fixated on having babies; a different one imagined working at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being caught in a horror film. Interestingly, she connected with Seligman through campus film circles and eventually featuring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a religious event with echoes of the intense thriller. The central motif of her journey, she explains, has been peers giving her a shot, rather than traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, continuing with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”

Manifesting Dreams

Anyone who had doubts regarding Sennott earlier will likely be regretting it now. In what she calls a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she has created the perfect project. Previously she posted a clip titled about Los Angeles online, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a show about city dwellers juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your client being labeled as being a intoxicated stealer, and possibly becoming a unreliable persona non grata). Some could tempting to create a program about online fame that was horribly idealized—or, worse, one that belittled at those depicted. I Love LA avoids both, resulting in a portrait of privileged young adult existence that’s frank about the grot and the appeal.

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 observes. “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