🔗 Share this article

Rachel Sennott enters the digital interview and right away starts an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she states, appearing really apologetic. She is only slightly late, she wants to justify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Fortunately, during an interview, that’s just what is ideal to encounter. Additionally, it’s fairly unsurprising. Viewers who know the boldly LGBTQ+ and outspoken film Bottoms—that Sennott collaborated on with the director and appeared in alongside her friend Ayo Edebiri—can already know that she has much to discuss, be it on identity, intimacy, or the merits of starting a teen combat group. And, once you finish her latest eight-part HBO series I Love LA, it is clear that the star has additional thoughts about the challenges of young adulthood (At 30, Sennott serves as an honorary member of the gang, straddling eras skilled for straddling different age groups).

Influences and Creative Vision

The comparisons to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott admits to being an admirer, citing it in addition to the classic series, the acclaimed comedy and Atlanta as inspirations for I Love LA, which tracks the struggles of online personality Tallulah and her friend who is also new agent Maia. However, the biggest influence on the moodboard was reserved for the popular sitcom, that HBO sitcom depicting an emerging Hollywood star navigating in a gritty Hollywood (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it throughout COVID-19, became “captivated”, and chose to put her own twist 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 says. The idea for I Love LA came—partly—from personal, originally fractious, transition to LA and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about event for astrology heads. This represented an era that saw her understand some big insights, professionally and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Early Beginnings

Brought up in New England, the star began developing and showcasing comedy while enrolled in theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she says. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”

She seized control, performing at amateur nights with Edebiri and posting hilarious (and decidedly) weird comedy videos digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females intensely fixated on motherhood; a different one portrayed working at the brand Hollister as like being trapped in a scary movie. Interestingly, she met Emma through campus film circles and ultimately appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a Jewish wake with shades of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her career, she says, has been people her own age supporting her, as opposed to established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she confirms, continuing humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”

Rising Success

Those who were skeptical about her then will likely be kicking themselves currently. In what she calls a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she appears to manifested her dream vehicle. In 2019 she posted a video named about Los Angeles online, in which she mocked 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 online celebrity (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your associate being labeled as being a intoxicated stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). It would be simple to produce a show about digital influence that was extremely glamorous—or, worse, one that punched down at those depicted. The series avoids both, creating a depiction of privileged twentysomething existence that’s honest about the grot and the glamour.

Nuanced Portrayal

“Many programs portray youth and online life with disdain and mockery,” 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