Rachel Sennott exploring her side-splitting show depicting that grotty glamour of today's youth life

The star joins the video call and immediately launches into an apology. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, seeming genuinely regretful. She is only slightly behind, she wants to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, during an interview, that’s exactly what one hopes to encounter. Besides, it’s fairly predictable. Anyone familiar with the unapologetically openly gay and outspoken film Bottoms—that she collaborated on with Emma Seligman and featured in together with her friend the talented actress—would already know that she possesses a lot to discuss, be it on identity, relationships, or the pros of creating a high-school combat group. Furthermore, by the end her recent multi-episode show I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she has additional thoughts regarding the challenges of young adulthood (As a millennial, she represents a bridge of the gang, a tale-end millennial adept for bridging both generations).

Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach

Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress readily acknowledges a fan, referencing it alongside the classic series, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as influences for her series, which follows the travails of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and aspiring agent Sennott’s character. However, the biggest presence on creative vision went to Entourage, that HBO sitcom focusing on a rising Hollywood star making his way in a corrupt LA scene (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She started watching it amid COVID-19, became “hooked”, and resolved to put her own twist 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 says. The inspiration for this project emerged—in part—from firsthand, initially fractious, relocation to Tinseltown and from her cosmic event, a popular event for followers. It was a time that included her grasp some big insights, in her career and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “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…”

Humble Origins

Brought up in the East Coast, Sennott began creating and acting comedy while enrolled in performance at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

She seized control, performing at amateur nights with Edebiri and sharing hysterical (and very) bizarre online content on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted a group of women fetishistically obsessed with motherhood; another envisioned working at the brand Hollister as akin to being caught in a horror film. Interestingly, she met Emma through campus film circles and ended up appearing in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her journey, she says, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, rather than the industry at large. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, adding humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Manifesting Dreams

Individuals who had doubts regarding Sennott previously will certainly be feeling foolish currently. Through she describes as a “incredibly circular” development, she seems to have created an ideal role. Previously she uploaded a video titled about Los Angeles on social media, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a comedy about LA residents managing the perks of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being accused of being a substance-abusing thief, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). It would be easy to create a program about internet celebrity that was overly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that punched down at those depicted. The series steers clear of each, resulting in a portrait of affluent millennial existence that’s frank about the mess and the glamour.

Empathetic Approach

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