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Rachel Sennott enters the video call and immediately starts an explanation. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, seeming truly regretful. She is only a bit behind, she wants to justify. “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 just what is ideal to encounter. Besides, it’s pretty unsurprising. Viewers familiar with the fearlessly openly gay and outspoken project Bottoms—which Sennott penned with the director and featured in alongside collaborator the talented actress—can already know that she holds a lot to share, whether on gender, intimacy, or the pros of starting a teen fight club. Plus, after watching her latest multi-episode HBO series I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has further insights regarding the struggles of young adulthood (At 30, Sennott serves as a bridge of the gang, straddling eras skilled for bridging millennials and Gen Z).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and the actress admits to being a fan, referencing it together with Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and the innovative program as inspirations for I Love LA, which details the struggles of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also aspiring representative Maia. Notably, the biggest influence on the moodboard belonged to the HBO series, that program depicting an emerging celebrity succeeding in a gritty entertainment industry (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She began viewing it during COVID-19, became “hooked”, and resolved to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.

“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she explains. The concept for I Love LA originated—to some extent—from firsthand, originally difficult, move to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a popular event for astrology heads. That period marked a phase that involved her understand major insights, in her career and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” It was almost like these biblical tests …”

Starting Out

Growing up in the East Coast, the star started developing and showcasing humor while enrolled in theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she states. “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 Edebiri and sharing uproarious (and decidedly) bizarre online content on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted several females fetishistically drawn to having babies; another portrayed working at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being trapped in a scary movie. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and eventually appearing in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a funeral gathering with hints of the intense thriller. The central motif of her journey, she notes, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, as opposed to established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, continuing with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Manifesting Dreams

Those who were skeptical regarding her then will certainly be feeling foolish currently. In what she calls a “wild, full-circle” development, she has manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she shared a clip titled “it’s LA” on social media, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a series about Angelenos juggling benefits of digital stardom (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your friend being suspected of being a drug-addled stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). Some could simple to produce a program about online fame that was extremely aspirational—or, more problematic, one that mocked at those depicted. I Love LA does neither, creating a portrait of advantaged millennial life that’s frank about the grot and the appeal.

Balanced Perspective

“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