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Rachel Sennott enters the video call and immediately launches into an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she states, seeming genuinely apologetic. She is only a couple of minutes behind, she feels compelled to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, for a writer, this is exactly what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s fairly unsurprising. Those familiar with the unapologetically LGBTQ+ and brash film Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with the director and starred in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—will be aware that Sennott holds plenty to share, ranging from on gender, intimacy, or the merits of forming a youth combat group. Furthermore, after watching the latest seasonal program I Love LA, it is clear that she has further perspectives regarding the darker side of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott is a relatable figure to younger audiences, on the cusp with a knack for straddling different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and Sennott readily acknowledges an admirer, citing the show together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and the innovative program as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the journey of a social media star Tallulah and her friend and new agent Maia. However, the largest spot on concept belonged to Entourage, that show focusing on an up-and-coming A-list actor succeeding in an often-seedy entertainment industry (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it during lockdown, became “captivated”, and resolved 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 inspiration for this project originated—in part—from her own, initially fractious, transition to Los Angeles and from the astrological phase, a popular occurrence for astrology heads. That period marked a phase that involved her grasp some big truths, in her career and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Starting Out

Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott started creating and acting humor while enrolled in acting at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “None of the university plays cast me either.” And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”

Sennott took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at amateur nights with her friend and uploading hysterical (and distinctly) bizarre online content digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females intensely obsessed with having babies; a different one portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as akin to being trapped in a scary movie. Interestingly, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and ended up starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a Jewish wake with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her path, she notes, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, rather than established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, adding with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Career Breakthrough

Anyone who questioned about her then will surely be feeling foolish today. Through she describes as a “incredibly circular” story, she appears to achieved her dream vehicle. A few years back she shared a clip called about Los Angeles online, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a show about city dwellers juggling benefits of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your friend being accused of being a intoxicated stealer, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). It would be tempting to make a show about internet celebrity that was horribly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that mocked at its subjects. This show does neither, creating a portrait of advantaged young adult existence that’s honest about the mess and the glamour.

Balanced Perspective

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