Rachel Sennott on the uproarious show depicting the grotty allure of today's youth life
The performer enters the video call and right away starts an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, seeming really apologetic. Despite being only slightly delayed, she feels compelled to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, for a writer, that’s exactly what one hopes to encounter. Additionally, it’s fairly expected. Anyone familiar with the boldly queer and unapologetically crass film titled Bottoms—that she co-wrote with Emma Seligman and appeared in alongside her friend Ayo Edebiri—would understand that Sennott possesses a lot to say, whether on identity, sex, or the pros of forming a youth combat group. Plus, once you finish her new seasonal program I Love LA, viewers realize that the star holds even more insights regarding the struggles of modern youth (Now in her thirties, Sennott represents an honorary member to younger audiences, straddling eras skilled for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott readily acknowledges an admirer, citing the show together with Sex and the City, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for I Love LA, which tracks the journey of online personality Tallulah and ally and aspiring talent manager Maia. Notably, the biggest presence on creative vision went to Entourage, that program about a rising A-list actor succeeding in a corrupt LA scene (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She started watching it amid the pandemic, became “captivated”, and resolved to create a new version on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she notes. The inspiration for the series emerged—partly—from personal, at first fractious, transition to Tinseltown and from the saturn return, a much-talked-about occurrence for astrology heads. That period marked an era that included her grasp some big insights, professionally and individually. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Starting Out
Brought up in New England, the star began writing and performing comedy while pursuing theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she explains. “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. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She decided to act independently, appearing at amateur nights with Edebiri and uploading hysterical (and very) unconventional skits online. One, Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically obsessed with pregnancy; another envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being trapped in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ultimately featuring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a funeral gathering with hints of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her path, she explains, has been people her own age supporting her, as opposed to established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, adding with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who were skeptical about Sennott earlier will likely be kicking themselves today. In what she labels a “wild, full-circle” development, she seems to have achieved the perfect project. In 2019 she shared a clip called “it’s LA” online, in which she parodied film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a show about city dwellers managing the perks of internet fame (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being labeled as being a drug-addled stealer, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). One might simple to create a show about digital influence that was horribly idealized—or, more problematic, one that belittled at its subjects. I Love LA steers clear of each, creating a representation of affluent young adult existence that’s honest 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