{"id":357937,"date":"2025-11-05T17:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/357937\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T17:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T17:44:10","slug":"its-for-the-girls-and-the-gays-rachel-sennott-on-her-hilarious-comedy-about-the-grotty-glamour-of-gen-z-life-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/357937\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s for the girls and the gays!\u2019 Rachel Sennott on her hilarious comedy about the grotty glamour of Gen Z life | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rachel Sennott hops on to our Zoom call and immediately launches into an apology. \u201cOh my God \u2013 I\u2019m sorry!\u201d she says, sounding pained. She is only a couple of minutes late, but she is keen to explain. \u201cI have such a problem, because I\u2019m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I\u2019m like, I\u2019ve gotta stop talking!\u201d Luckily, it\u2019s exactly what a writer wants to hear at the start of an interview. Besides, it\u2019s fairly unsurprising. Anyone who has watched the unapologetically queer, unapologetically crass film Bottoms<\/a> \u2013 which Sennott co-wrote with Emma Seligman, and starred in alongside her friend, The Bear\u2019s breakout star Ayo Edebiri <\/a>\u2013 will already know that she has plenty to say, be it about gender, sex, or the merits of starting a high-school fight club. And by the end of her new eight-part HBO series I Love LA, it is clear that she has even more to say about the darker side of Gen Z life (at 30, she is an honorary member of the gang, a tale-end millennial with a knack for straddling both generations).<\/p>\n

The comparisons to Lena Dunham\u2019s Girls<\/a> are inevitable and Sennott is, of course, a fan, citing the show alongside Sex and the City<\/a>, Insecure<\/a> and Atlanta<\/a> as influences for her series, which follows the travails of an influencer, Tallulah (Odessa A\u2019Zion) and her friend and fledgling talent manager, Maia (Sennott). Perhaps the largest spot on the moodboard, though, went to Entourage, the HBO sitcom about a rising A-list actor making his way in an often-seedy Hollywood (choice quote: \u201cnobody\u2019s happy in this town except for the losers\u201d). Sennott started watching it during the pandemic, became \u201cobsessed\u201d, and decided to put her own twist on it \u201cfor the girls and the gays\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,\u201d she says. The idea for I Love LA came \u2013 in part \u2013 from her own, initially fractious, move to Tinseltown and from her saturn return<\/a>, a much-talked-about event for astrology heads. It was a period that saw her learn some big life lessons, professionally and personally. \u201cIn my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,\u201d she says. \u201cIn my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. It was almost like these biblical tests \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Raised in Connecticut, Sennott began writing and performing comedy while studying acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. \u201cI went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren\u2019t gelling,\u201d she says. \u201cI 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\u2019t make it into any of them. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Now I do love LA!\u2019 \u2026 Sennott.<\/p>\n

Sennott took matters into her own hands, performing at open mics with Edebiri and posting hysterical (and decidedly weird) comedy videos online. One, Baby Cult<\/a>, followed a group of women fetishistically obsessed with pregnancy; another<\/a> imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being trapped in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she met Seligman through the university\u2019s film scene and ended up starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby<\/a>, a tense comedy set at a Jewish wake with shades of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her career, she says, has been people her own age giving her a shot, rather than the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? \u201cNot the gatekeepers\u201d, she repeats, adding with a laugh: \u201cThey don\u2019t want us to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone who had doubts about Sennott then will surely be kicking themselves now. In what she describes as a \u201cwild, full-circle\u201d turn of events, she seems to have manifested her dream vehicle. In 2019 she posted a video called \u201cit\u2019s LA\u201d online,<\/a> in which she lampooned Hollywood trailers (\u201cI\u2019m addicted to drugs \u2013 we all are\u201d). Six years on, she\u2019s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a comedy about Angelenos balancing the perks of internet fame (such as partying at Elijah Wood\u2019s house) with its pitfalls (your client being accused of being a drug-addled thief, and potentially becoming a \u201cbrand unsafe\u201d pariah). It would be easy to make a show about online fame that was horribly aspirational \u2013 or, worse, one that punched down at its subjects. I Love LA does neither, making for a portrait of privileged twentysomething life that\u2019s frank about the grot and the glamour.<\/p>\n

Jordan Firstman as Charlie, True Whitaker as Alani, Odessa A\u2019zion as Tallulah and Rachel Sennott as Maia in I Love LA. Photograph: HBO\/Sky Comedy<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,\u201d she says. \u201cI think that young people have been through a lot \u2013 I\u2019m 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.\u201d These days, she says, \u201cit doesn\u2019t feel like the world is falling apart \u2013 the world is falling apart. And you get to a point where it\u2019s depressing, it makes you nihilistic.\u201d The internet can be bad and good, she says, \u201cbut I just feel like it\u2019s never really approached with nuance \u2013 it\u2019s like, look at these vapid idiots on their phones. I wanted to approach it in a way where I didn\u2019t judge the characters. Obviously they\u2019re comedy characters, but I tried to look at all of them with empathy.\u201d<\/p>\n

While it doesn\u2019t offer full-on Marxist critique, I Love LA ponders the limits of the influencer economy, and the hidden costs of keeping up appearances. When we first meet Tallulah, she is living the high life \u2013 complete with an ill-gotten Balenciaga bag \u2013 but she is broke, her life online little more than social media smoke and mirrors. \u201cInfluencers are being sent a bunch of free merch, but maybe they can\u2019t pay rent,\u201d says Sennott. \u201cI\u2019m not saying they have the worst problems of anyone in the world. But part of what we wanted to show is that everyone is trying to present as doing better than they actually are, and pull back the curtain.\u201d Variety<\/a> pondered why we don\u2019t actually see the content that Tallulah makes on screen, but Sennott didn\u2019t think it was necessary. \u201cNo one wants to watch 30 minutes of someone editing a TikTok,\u201d she says. Besides, \u201cyou see [Odessa] walk on camera and you go, yeah: that\u2019s an It-girl! She just carries the charisma. I\u2019m like, I don\u2019t give a shit if she\u2019s selling tinned fish or if she has a podcast!\u201d<\/p>\n

Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri in Bottoms. Photograph: Courtesy of ORION Pictures Inc.<\/p>\n

As well as its on-the-ball observations, I Love LA is fabulously funny, often spit-out-your-coffee absurd, and has a lot of heart to boot. Picking out hilarious moments is tough \u2013 because there are so many \u2013 but the unmasking of an influencer as a \u201cprison nepo baby\u201d whose family used to own Rikers Island jail is high on the list, as is a meltdown that takes place to the sound of the much-memed All Star by Smash Mouth. In an episode inspired by a super-painful medical emergency that Sennott suffered in real life, Maia pretends to be Jewish to jump the queue at the hospital for \u201copen-toe surgery\u201d. Very Curb Your Enthusiasm, but also extremely Rachel Sennott, who has often been mistaken for being Jewish, perhaps fuelled by Shiva Baby (she is, in fact, from a Catholic family of Irish and Italian descent). Elsewhere, the friendship at the centre of the series is frequently toxic and codependent, but also steeped in the kind of picked-up-where-we-left-off warmth that only old friends can have. \u201cI think you see the beauty of [Maia and Tallulah\u2019s] relationship, too,\u201d she says. \u201cI hope it\u2019s not just frenemies vibes!\u201d<\/p>\n

The transition from film to TV was a learning curve, aided by the likes of Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers, Succession), who was an executive producer and directed two of the episodes. But it was a challenge that Sennott clearly rose to, along with the rest of the cast. \u201cI could shout out every single person,\u201d she beams. \u201cThere were no weak links. Everyone shines.\u201d And, of course, she shines too, drawing on everything that has brought her to this moment to give a lead performance that\u2019s as heartbreaking as it is side-splitting.<\/p>\n

How does she feel about the city that made it all possible? \u201cI\u2019ve been there for five years, which is when everyone says it starts to get fabulous \u2013 and goddamn is it fabulous!\u201d she says. \u201cSo, yes \u2013 now I do love LA!\u201d<\/p>\n

I Love LA is available on NOW in the UK, HBO in the US and HBO Max in Australia.<\/p>\n