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Rachel Sennott enters the video call and at once starts an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, sounding truly regretful. Although she's only a couple of minutes behind, she feels compelled to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, during an interview, that’s precisely what one hopes to hear. Additionally, it’s fairly expected. Those who know the fearlessly openly gay and outspoken project Bottoms—that she penned with the director and starred in alongside collaborator Ayo Edebiri—will understand that she holds a lot to discuss, whether about roles, sex, or the merits of starting a youth fight club. And, once you finish her latest seasonal HBO series titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star holds further insights on the challenges of young adulthood (As a millennial, she is an honorary member of the gang, straddling eras with a knack for straddling millennials and Gen Z).

Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach

Likenesses to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott admits to being a fan, citing the show together with Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as influences for her series, which details the travails of an influencer Tallulah and her friend and new talent manager Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the most significant presence on the moodboard went to Entourage, that HBO sitcom about an up-and-coming celebrity making his way in a corrupt Hollywood (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott discovered it during the pandemic, became “captivated”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.

“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The idea for this project came—in part—from firsthand, at first rocky, transition to Tinseltown and from the astrological phase, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. It was a phase that saw her learn significant insights, in her career and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “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, the star started writing and performing comedy while enrolled in acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “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, appearing at open mics with Ayo and sharing uproarious (and decidedly) unconventional online content digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, depicted a group of women intensely fixated on motherhood; another portrayed being employed at a trendy retail outlet as like being stuck in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Emma through the university’s film scene and ended up appearing in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her path, she explains, has been peers offering opportunities, as opposed to established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, stating with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Career Breakthrough

Those who questioned regarding Sennott then will certainly be feeling foolish today. Through she calls a “incredibly circular” development, she appears to created her dream vehicle. Previously she uploaded content called about Los Angeles online, in which she mocked film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a show about LA residents managing benefits of internet fame (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being suspected of being a intoxicated criminal, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). One might tempting to create a program about internet celebrity that was overly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that belittled at those depicted. This show does neither, creating a portrait of privileged twentysomething life that’s candid about the mess and the shine.

Balanced Perspective

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