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Rachel Sennott enters the online meeting and immediately begins an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, seeming really regretful. She is only a couple of minutes behind, she feels compelled to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Fortunately, during an interview, this is precisely what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s pretty predictable. Those who know the unapologetically LGBTQ+ and unapologetically crass movie Bottoms—that Sennott penned with Emma Seligman and appeared in with her friend the talented actress—would be aware that she possesses plenty to say, whether about gender, intimacy, or the merits of creating a youth fight club. And, after watching her new eight-part show I Love LA, viewers realize that the star carries even more insights about the challenges of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott serves as a bridge to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial with a knack for straddling different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress readily acknowledges an admirer, citing the show alongside the classic series, Insecure and the innovative program as inspirations for I Love LA, which details the struggles of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and fledgling representative Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the biggest spot on creative vision belonged to the popular sitcom, that program focusing on an up-and-coming Hollywood star succeeding in a corrupt Hollywood (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She discovered it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective 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 notes. The idea for the series originated—in part—from personal, originally rocky, move to LA and from the cosmic event, a frequently discussed event for astrology heads. It was a phase that involved her understand some big insights, in her career and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “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 humor while enrolled in theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” 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 decided to act independently, appearing at amateur nights with Ayo and posting hilarious (and distinctly) bizarre skits online. One, titled Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically fixated on pregnancy; another portrayed being employed at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being caught in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and ended up appearing in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a Jewish wake with hints of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her journey, she explains, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, as opposed to traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she repeats, continuing humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Manifesting Dreams

Anyone who questioned about her previously will likely be feeling foolish now. In what she describes as a “wild, full-circle” development, she has manifested her dream vehicle. A few years back she uploaded content named about Los Angeles online, in which she lampooned movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a comedy about LA residents juggling the perks of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being suspected of being a substance-abusing thief, and possibly becoming a unreliable outcast). One might tempting to produce a show about online fame that was overly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that belittled at those depicted. I Love LA does neither, creating a portrait of affluent twentysomething existence that’s frank about the chaos and the glamour.

Empathetic Approach

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