The comedic talent discussing her side-splitting comedy about that messy glamour of Gen Z existence

Rachel Sennott joins the video call and right away begins an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, sounding truly apologetic. She is only slightly late, she wants to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Fortunately, for a writer, this is exactly what one hopes to experience. Besides, it’s pretty unsurprising. Anyone who know her unapologetically queer and outspoken film Bottoms—that Sennott penned with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside collaborator Ayo Edebiri—will already know that she holds a lot to share, be it on identity, sex, or the merits of starting a teen fight club. Plus, after watching her new multi-episode show I Love LA, viewers realize that the star holds even more perspectives about the struggles of young adulthood (At 30, she represents a bridge for this generation, a tale-end millennial with a knack for bridging different age groups).

Influences and Storytelling Approach

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show can’t be avoided and Sennott is an admirer, citing it together with Sex and the City, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as influences for the project, which details the journey of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion who is also aspiring representative Maia. However, the largest influence on the moodboard was reserved for the HBO series, the show about an up-and-coming celebrity navigating in a gritty entertainment industry (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott started watching it throughout lockdown, became “obsessed”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective on it “for the girls and the gays”.

“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she explains. The idea for the series came—partly—from personal, originally rocky, move to LA and from her cosmic event, a frequently discussed phenomenon for followers. It was a phase that included her learn major life lessons, in her career and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Early Beginnings

Raised in Connecticut, the star started developing and showcasing comedy while studying performance at NYU’s Tisch. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she states. “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, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and uploading uproarious (and distinctly) unconventional comedy videos digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females fetishistically fixated on pregnancy; another portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as similar to being stuck in a thriller. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through campus film circles and ended up appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a religious event with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her career, she notes, has been peers giving her a shot, as opposed to the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she repeats, adding with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Rising Success

Anyone who questioned about her earlier will certainly be feeling foolish now. In what she describes as a “astonishingly complete” story, she appears to created an ideal role. In 2019 she uploaded a clip named about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos managing benefits of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being labeled as being a intoxicated stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). One might simple to create a program about online fame that was extremely glamorous—or, more problematic, one that punched down at those depicted. This show does neither, resulting in a representation of advantaged millennial existence that’s candid about the grot 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