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Rachel Sennott appears on the video call and right away starts an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, sounding really apologetic. Although she's only a bit delayed, she needs to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Thankfully, for a writer, this is just what is ideal to encounter. Besides, it’s fairly expected. Those who have seen the boldly LGBTQ+ and outspoken project Bottoms—which she penned with Emma Seligman and appeared in together with close companion Ayo Edebiri—will already know that Sennott possesses plenty to discuss, be it on identity, sex, or the appeal of forming a high-school fight club. Plus, after watching the latest eight-part program I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she holds even more thoughts about the challenges of young adulthood (As a millennial, she is a relatable figure to younger audiences, straddling eras with a knack for bridging millennials and Gen Z).

Inspirations and Creative Vision

Parallels to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott is a fan, naming it in addition to the HBO hit, Insecure and the innovative program as inspirations for the project, which tracks the struggles of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and new agent Sennott’s character. However, the biggest presence on concept went to the popular sitcom, that HBO sitcom about a rising A-list actor navigating in a corrupt entertainment industry (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott started watching it amid COVID-19, became “captivated”, and decided to add a fresh perspective on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.

“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she notes. The concept for I Love LA originated—partly—from firsthand, initially fractious, transition to Los Angeles and from her astrological phase, a popular event for enthusiasts. This represented a phase that included her understand some big insights, work-wise and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Early Beginnings

Raised in Connecticut, the star started creating and acting stand-up while studying theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she states. “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. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”

She decided to act independently, appearing at live shows with Edebiri and sharing uproarious (and distinctly) weird skits online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females obsessively fixated on motherhood; a different one imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being trapped in a thriller. By chance, she connected with Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a religious event with echoes of the intense thriller. The central motif of her journey, she says, has been people her own age giving her a shot, as opposed to traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she confirms, stating with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Rising Success

Individuals who had doubts regarding Sennott then will certainly be feeling foolish today. Through she calls a “astonishingly complete” development, she appears to created an ideal role. Previously she uploaded a clip called about Los Angeles on social media, in which she mocked movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a series about LA residents managing the perks of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being labeled as being a drug-addled criminal, and potentially becoming a risky outcast). Some could easy to create a program about digital influence that was horribly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that mocked at those depicted. This show does neither, resulting in a portrait of advantaged twentysomething life that’s frank about the chaos and the appeal.

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 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