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Rachel Sennott joins the video call and immediately begins an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she states, sounding genuinely remorseful. She is only slightly behind, she wants to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Fortunately, during an interview, that’s exactly what you want to experience. Besides, it’s pretty predictable. Viewers who have seen her unapologetically LGBTQ+ and outspoken project Bottoms—which she penned with Emma Seligman and starred in together with her friend Ayo Edebiri—would be aware that Sennott has plenty to share, ranging from about gender, intimacy, or the merits of starting a high-school fight club. Plus, after watching her latest multi-episode show titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star holds further thoughts about the struggles of young adulthood (At 30, she is a relatable figure to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial with a knack for connecting different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and Sennott admits to being a fan, citing the show in addition to the classic series, Insecure and Atlanta as guides for her series, which details the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and new agent Maia. Perhaps, the most significant spot on the moodboard went to Entourage, the HBO sitcom about a rising Hollywood star making his way in an often-seedy entertainment industry (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott began viewing it throughout the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose to put her own twist 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 says. The inspiration for this project emerged—partly—from personal, initially fractious, move to LA and from her saturn return, a popular occurrence for enthusiasts. That period marked a time that included her learn significant insights, work-wise and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” 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…”

Early Beginnings

Brought up in New England, Sennott commenced developing and showcasing comedy while pursuing performance 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. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

She took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and uploading uproarious (and very) bizarre online content online. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically fixated on pregnancy; another imagined working at the brand Hollister as akin to being trapped in a horror film. By chance, she met Seligman through campus film circles and ultimately appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of the intense thriller. The big theme of her career, she notes, has been people her own age offering opportunities, as opposed to traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, adding amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Career Breakthrough

Anyone who questioned about Sennott then will surely be feeling foolish now. Through she calls a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she seems to have achieved an ideal role. A few years back she posted a clip called on LA life on social media, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s executive producer (with Emma Barrie) of a comedy about city dwellers balancing advantages of online celebrity (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your associate being accused of being a intoxicated stealer, and potentially becoming a risky persona non grata). Some could tempting to produce a program about internet celebrity that was horribly glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at its subjects. I Love LA does neither, making for a portrait of advantaged millennial existence that’s honest about the chaos and the shine.

Empathetic Approach

“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