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Rachel Sennott joins the digital interview and at once starts an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, appearing really regretful. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she needs to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, in this context, this is precisely what is ideal to experience. Besides, it’s fairly expected. Those who have seen the boldly queer and unapologetically crass movie Bottoms—that she penned with Emma Seligman and featured in together with her friend the talented actress—can understand that Sennott has much to discuss, be it about identity, relationships, or the appeal of creating a high-school combat group. And, after watching her new eight-part HBO series I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she holds additional perspectives about the darker side of Gen Z life (At 30, Sennott serves as a bridge to younger audiences, on the cusp with a knack for connecting different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach

Parallels to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott is a fan, referencing it in addition to Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as guides for I Love LA, which details the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and ally and fledgling talent manager Maia. Perhaps, the biggest presence on creative vision went to Entourage, that HBO sitcom focusing on a rising Hollywood star navigating in an often-seedy Hollywood (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it during lockdown, became “captivated”, and decided 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 notes. The idea for the series came—partly—from personal, initially fractious, relocation to Los Angeles and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed occurrence for astrology heads. This represented a phase that saw her grasp some big insights, professionally and individually. “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. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”

Starting Out

Brought up in the East Coast, the star started creating and acting comedy while pursuing acting 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. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

She decided to act independently, performing at amateur nights with Ayo and uploading hilarious (and very) weird skits online. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted several females fetishistically fixated on pregnancy; another portrayed working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being stuck in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually featuring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her career, she says, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, rather than established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she confirms, stating humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Manifesting Dreams

Anyone who questioned regarding Sennott earlier will certainly be regretting it now. Through she describes as a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she appears to achieved an ideal role. Previously she shared a video titled on LA life on the internet, in which she lampooned film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s executive producer (with her partner) of a show about LA residents managing benefits of online celebrity (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being accused of being a intoxicated criminal, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). It would be easy to create a show about internet celebrity that was horribly glamorous—or, worse, one that mocked at the characters. This show does neither, making for a depiction of privileged young adult life that’s honest about the grot and the appeal.

Balanced Perspective

“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” 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