The West Has Never Been More Wild With Rachel Sennott’s I LOVE LA

By BILL HARRIS Special to The Lede   It was pointed out to Rachel Sennott that a major entertainment publication has described her new HBO comedy series I LOVE LA as “the quintessential Gen Z show.” So what does that mean exactly? “Um, I don’t really know what that means, either,” said Sennott, prompting laughter at a media conference this week. Nonetheless, as the creator, writer, director, executive producer, and star of I LOVE LA – which premieres Sunday, Nov. 2 on Crave – the 30-year-old Sennott attempted to sum up her creative parameters. “Basically, when we were making this show, we had a lot of references to iconic HBO shows,” Sennott said. “We talked a lot about SEX AND THE CITY. We talked about GIRLS. We talked about INSECURE. Also, ENTOURAGE was a big reference (all those series are on Crave). ATLANTA is another big reference for us. So we took a bunch of inspiration, but ideally what we wanted to create was our own unique tone, something that felt unique to us, and very specific to now.” Sennott’s star has been significantly on the rise for the past five years or so, first online, then in film and TV. In 2021 she had a major role in the ABC sitcom CALL YOUR MOTHER, playing the daughter of Kyra Sedgwick’s character. In 2023 she starred in the movies Bottoms and I Used To Be Funny, and had a recurring role as Leia in HBO’s THE IDOL (all three titles on Crave). In 2024 she starred in the film Saturday Night (also on Crave). And just last February, Sennott was selected, alongside Bowen Yang, to announce the nominations for the 97th OSCARS®. In I LOVE LA, Sennott plays Maia, a junior staffer at a talent management company in Los Angeles who has grown frustrated with her career, and is angling to get a promotion from her boss Alyssa, played by Leighton Meester. Maia’s life gets a jolt with the unannounced arrival of her estranged college friend and social media star Tallulah, played by Odessa A’Zion. The two were best friends back in New York, but their plans to move to L.A. together were scuttled when Tallulah backed out at the last minute, and their friendship fell apart for good reasons on both sides. But Maia and Tallulah kind of need each other again, so they get over past grievances quickly. Maia reassumes responsibility for Tallulah’s career, but their reunion has some immediate and disruptive effects on the lives of their friends and lovers, including Jordan Firstman as Charlie, True Whitaker as Alani, and Josh Hutcherson as Dylan. Whether Sennott is intentionally making generational generalizations or not, most of the twentysomething characters in I LOVE LA are intensely narcissistic. They make bad decision after bad decision, while always craving and expecting instant success. They’re incredibly quick to threaten legal action (and sometimes it’s not just a threat) against anyone who crosses them, even their so-called friends. And for the ones who have the numbers to do so, they don’t mind weaponizing their followers on social media, either. It’s all just another day in L.A. “I try to approach all the characters with love and empathy,” said Sennott, who is not actually from Los Angeles, but was born in Connecticut, and first came up through the New York entertainment scene. “Obviously, they’re comedy characters. Look, I’m probably a damn narcissist. This is my job. They’re flawed characters, but that’s what I think makes interesting characters. We also tried to look at them with love and humanity, and find multi-facets to them, to feel like they were nuanced.” Sennott moved to Los Angeles during COVID, and she said I LOVE LA speaks to her early experiences on the West Coast, when she was “feeling really isolated, didn’t have a lot of friends here, started going through my ‘Saturn return,’ and was getting into a car accident every three months.” But then the question looms: will viewers who have never lived in Los Angeles be able to penetrate some of the inside humour in I LOVE LA? “I think anything, if it’s super specific, actually becomes more relatable, do you know what I mean?” Sennott explained. “Like, I love mafia movies. I’m not in the mafia. But I get it. Like Casino or something (available on STARZ). They set it up, like, ‘Jimmy was the guy that did this, buh buh buh buh buh,’ and you go, ‘okay, I get it.’ So we tried to have a balance of inside jokes, but also set up enough of the rules for the show so that people would get it. Any of the characters could have easily become, well, not a trope, but I think there’s a way it could veer into that. But each actor did so much work grounding their characters in humanity, so that even if you don’t live in L.A., you’re like, ‘I have a friend like that.’ I think the characters, and the relationships, are relatable anywhere.”   billharristv@gmail.com @billharris_tv