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Rachel Sennott enters the online meeting and right away starts an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, appearing really regretful. Although she's only a bit delayed, she needs to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, for a writer, this is exactly what is ideal to hear. Moreover, it’s quite unsurprising. Viewers familiar with her unapologetically queer and brash movie titled Bottoms—which Sennott co-wrote with the director and appeared in together with close companion Ayo Edebiri—will already know that Sennott has plenty to discuss, whether on roles, intimacy, or the merits of forming a youth fight club. Plus, after watching the latest seasonal show I Love LA, it is clear that the star holds further thoughts about the darker side of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott represents a relatable figure to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial adept for straddling different age groups).

Inspirations and Creative Vision

Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott is a fan, referencing the show together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for I Love LA, which details the struggles of an influencer Tallulah and close companion and fledgling talent manager Sennott’s character. Notably, the most significant influence on concept belonged to the popular sitcom, the show depicting a rising Hollywood star succeeding in a gritty LA scene (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She began viewing it throughout lockdown, became “obsessed”, and chose to put her own twist on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.

“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The concept for this project originated—to some extent—from personal, at first fractious, relocation to Tinseltown and from the saturn return, a much-talked-about occurrence for followers. This represented a time that saw her understand significant truths, work-wise and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. It was almost like these biblical tests …”

Early Beginnings

Brought up in New England, Sennott began developing and showcasing humor while studying theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “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. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”

Sennott decided to act independently, performing at live shows with Ayo and sharing uproarious (and very) unconventional skits online. One, titled Baby Cult, followed characters obsessively drawn to having babies; a different one imagined being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being caught in a thriller. Interestingly, she connected with Emma through the university’s film scene and ultimately starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a religious event with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her path, she notes, has been people her own age offering opportunities, as opposed to traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she repeats, adding with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Rising Success

Anyone who were skeptical regarding Sennott earlier will certainly be regretting it currently. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she seems to have achieved an ideal role. Previously she shared a clip called about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she parodied film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos managing advantages of online celebrity (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being labeled as being a drug-addled criminal, and perhaps becoming a unreliable pariah). It would be tempting to make a show about internet celebrity that was overly glamorous—or, more problematic, one that mocked at those depicted. I Love LA steers clear of each, resulting in a depiction of affluent young adult existence that’s frank about the chaos 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 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