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Rachel Sennott appears on the video call and immediately launches into an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, seeming genuinely regretful. She is only slightly delayed, she wants to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Thankfully, during an interview, this is precisely what one hopes to experience. Besides, it’s quite expected. Viewers familiar with the boldly LGBTQ+ and unapologetically crass project titled Bottoms—which Sennott collaborated on with her creative partner and featured in alongside collaborator The Bear’s standout—would already know that Sennott possesses plenty to discuss, whether about roles, sex, or the pros of creating a high-school combat group. Furthermore, by the end the latest multi-episode HBO series titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star carries additional perspectives regarding the challenges of Gen Z life (At 30, she is a bridge for this generation, straddling eras adept for bridging millennials and Gen Z).

Inspirations and Storytelling Approach

Parallels to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and the actress readily acknowledges enthusiastic, referencing it alongside the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as guides for her series, which tracks the struggles of a social media star Tallulah and her friend who is also aspiring talent manager Sennott’s character. Notably, the biggest influence on creative vision was reserved for the HBO series, that show depicting an up-and-coming celebrity navigating in an often-seedy Hollywood (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott began viewing it throughout the pandemic, became “hooked”, and decided 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 explains. The idea for I Love LA originated—partly—from personal, initially fractious, relocation to Tinseltown and from her astrological phase, a frequently discussed event for followers. This represented an era that involved her understand significant insights, work-wise and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “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

Raised in Connecticut, the star commenced developing and showcasing humor while pursuing acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she says. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. 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.”

She seized control, taking the stage at live shows with Ayo and uploading hilarious (and distinctly) bizarre online content on the internet. One, Baby Cult, followed characters fetishistically drawn to motherhood; a different one imagined being employed at the brand Hollister as similar to being caught in a scary movie. By chance, she connected with Emma through the university’s film scene and ended up appearing in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a Jewish wake with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her path, she notes, has been people her own age giving her a shot, rather than the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, continuing amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Rising Success

Those who had doubts regarding her then will surely be kicking themselves now. Through she labels a “wild, full-circle” development, she seems to have achieved the perfect project. Previously she shared content titled about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she lampooned movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a show about city dwellers balancing benefits of digital stardom (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being suspected of being a drug-addled thief, and potentially becoming a unreliable persona non grata). One might simple to create a series about digital influence that was overly glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at its subjects. I Love LA does neither, making for a depiction of privileged millennial existence that’s honest about the grot and the glamour.

Nuanced Portrayal

“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