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Rachel Sennott appears on the video call and right away launches into an apology. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, sounding really remorseful. Despite being only a bit delayed, she wants to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, in this context, this is just what you want to experience. Additionally, it’s pretty predictable. Viewers who know the boldly queer and brash project Bottoms—that she co-wrote with her creative partner and starred in alongside her friend Ayo Edebiri—can already know that Sennott holds a lot to share, ranging from on gender, sex, or the merits of creating a youth combat group. Furthermore, by the end the recent multi-episode show titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star holds even more thoughts regarding the challenges of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott is an honorary member for this generation, a tale-end millennial adept for connecting different age groups).

Influences and Storytelling Approach

Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and Sennott admits to being an admirer, naming it alongside the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as guides for the project, which details the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also fledgling talent manager Maia. Perhaps, the most significant spot on the moodboard belonged to Entourage, that HBO sitcom focusing on an emerging A-list actor navigating in a gritty LA scene (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She began viewing it throughout lockdown, became “obsessed”, and resolved to create a new version on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.

“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she notes. The idea for the series originated—to some extent—from her own, originally fractious, move to Tinseltown and from the cosmic event, a much-talked-about event for astrology heads. That period marked a phase that saw her understand major insights, in her career and individually. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Early Beginnings

Brought up in New England, Sennott commenced writing and performing humor while pursuing theatre at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

Sennott decided to act independently, performing at live shows with Edebiri and sharing hysterical (and very) unconventional comedy videos on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted a group of women intensely fixated on pregnancy; a different one envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being stuck in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Seligman through campus film circles and eventually starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a funeral gathering with shades of Uncut Gems. The central motif of her career, she notes, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, adding with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Career Breakthrough

Individuals who were skeptical about her previously will certainly be kicking themselves today. As part of she describes as a “wild, full-circle” development, she has manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded a video called about Los Angeles online, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a series about Angelenos juggling benefits of online celebrity (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your associate being suspected of being a drug-addled criminal, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). It would be tempting to create a series about online fame that was overly idealized—or, more problematic, one that mocked at the characters. The series does neither, making for a representation of affluent millennial living that’s honest about the grot 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