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Rachel Sennott joins the online meeting and at once starts an apology. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, seeming really remorseful. Despite being only slightly behind, she needs to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, for a writer, this is precisely what you want to experience. Besides, it’s quite unsurprising. Anyone who have seen her unapologetically LGBTQ+ and brash film titled Bottoms—which she co-wrote with Emma Seligman and appeared in together with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—would understand that Sennott possesses plenty to say, ranging from about identity, intimacy, or the merits of forming a youth fight club. Furthermore, by the end the recent multi-episode show titled I Love LA, it is clear that she carries even more thoughts regarding the struggles of young adulthood (At 30, Sennott serves as a bridge of the gang, a tale-end millennial adept for straddling both generations).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

Likenesses to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and the actress is a fan, citing it together with Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as guides for her series, which details the journey of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and aspiring representative Maia. Notably, the most significant presence on the moodboard was reserved for Entourage, the program focusing on a rising celebrity succeeding in a gritty Hollywood (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She began viewing it throughout lockdown, became “obsessed”, and resolved to create a new version 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 says. The idea for I Love LA emerged—to some extent—from her own, initially rocky, relocation to Tinseltown and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about occurrence for enthusiasts. It was a time that included her grasp significant life lessons, professionally 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…”

Early Beginnings

Growing up in Connecticut, the star began writing and performing comedy while enrolled in theatre at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she says. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. 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.”

Sennott took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and posting hysterical (and very) unconventional online content digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, followed several females obsessively obsessed with having babies; another portrayed being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being stuck in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and eventually appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her career, she says, has been peers supporting her, as opposed to the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, adding humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Career Breakthrough

Those who questioned about her then will certainly be kicking themselves now. In what she calls a “incredibly circular” development, she appears to achieved the perfect project. A few years back she shared content named on LA life on the internet, in which she lampooned film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s executive producer (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos juggling the perks of internet fame (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your associate being labeled as being a intoxicated stealer, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). It would be easy to create a show about internet celebrity that was overly aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at its subjects. This show avoids both, making for a depiction of privileged twentysomething living that’s honest about the chaos and the appeal.

Empathetic Approach

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