Rachel Sennott appears on the digital interview and at once begins an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she states, seeming truly apologetic. Despite being only a couple of minutes behind, she feels compelled to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, for a writer, that’s precisely what one hopes to encounter. Moreover, it’s pretty predictable. Anyone who have seen her fearlessly openly gay and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside her friend the talented actress—can be aware that she holds a lot to discuss, whether on gender, intimacy, or the pros of starting a youth combat group. Furthermore, after watching the recent eight-part HBO series titled I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has even more thoughts on the struggles of modern youth (Now in her thirties, she serves as an honorary member to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial skilled for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Guiding Lights and Creative Vision
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott readily acknowledges an admirer, naming the show alongside the classic series, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as inspirations for the project, which tracks the travails of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also fledgling talent manager Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the largest presence on creative vision belonged to the HBO series, that HBO sitcom about an emerging celebrity navigating in a corrupt Hollywood (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She discovered it amid lockdown, became “hooked”, and resolved to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she says. The concept for this project came—to some extent—from firsthand, at first rocky, move to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about event for enthusiasts. This represented an era that included her understand major insights, professionally and in private life. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Humble Origins
Brought up in the East Coast, the star commenced writing and performing humor while studying acting at a prestigious arts school. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She seized control, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and sharing hysterical (and very) bizarre skits online. One, Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically obsessed with pregnancy; another envisioned being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being caught in a horror film. By chance, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and ultimately appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a Jewish wake with hints of the intense thriller. The big theme of her journey, she says, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, rather than traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, adding humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Career Breakthrough
Those who were skeptical about Sennott previously will surely be feeling foolish today. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she seems to have created an ideal role. In 2019 she shared content titled on LA life on the internet, in which she mocked film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a show about LA residents balancing the perks of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your client being accused of being a intoxicated criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable outcast). It would be easy to make a show about digital influence that was extremely glamorous—or, more problematic, one that belittled at the characters. This show avoids both, creating a representation of privileged millennial life that’s honest about the grot and the appeal.
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 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
