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Rachel Sennott appears on the video call and immediately launches into an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, seeming genuinely remorseful. Although she's only a couple of minutes late, she needs to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, for a writer, this is precisely what is ideal to hear. Additionally, it’s quite expected. Viewers familiar with the fearlessly queer and brash project titled Bottoms—which she penned with Emma Seligman and appeared in with close companion Ayo Edebiri—would already know that Sennott holds much to discuss, whether on roles, sex, or the merits of creating a teen brawl society. And, by the end her latest eight-part show I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star holds even more insights on the challenges of modern youth (At 30, she is a relatable figure for this generation, on the cusp with a knack for straddling different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and the actress is a fan, referencing it together with the classic series, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as guides for the project, which details the journey of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and aspiring representative Sennott’s character. Notably, the biggest influence on the moodboard was reserved for the HBO series, the show about an emerging Hollywood star making his way in an often-seedy LA scene (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She began viewing it during the pandemic, became “captivated”, and chose to add a fresh perspective on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.

“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she notes. The inspiration for I Love LA originated—partly—from firsthand, originally difficult, transition to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about occurrence for astrology heads. This represented a phase that included her learn major truths, in her career and individually. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. It was almost like these biblical tests …”

Early Beginnings

Brought up in Connecticut, the star commenced developing and showcasing stand-up while studying performance at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” 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. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”

Sennott decided to act independently, appearing at live shows with Edebiri and posting uproarious (and very) weird online content digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females intensely fixated on motherhood; a different one imagined working at the brand Hollister as akin to being caught in a thriller. Interestingly, she encountered Seligman through campus film circles and ultimately appearing in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a Jewish wake with shades of Uncut Gems. The central motif of her career, she says, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, as opposed to traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, stating amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Manifesting Dreams

Those who had doubts regarding Sennott previously will likely be feeling foolish now. Through she labels a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she has manifested the perfect project. Previously she uploaded content named on LA life online, in which she lampooned Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a show about LA residents managing benefits of digital stardom (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). One might easy to make a program about online fame that was extremely idealized—or, worse, one that belittled at the characters. This show avoids both, resulting in a representation of privileged millennial existence that’s frank about the chaos and the glamour.

Empathetic Approach

“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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