Rachel Sennott Plants Roots With ‘I Love LA’: Daily Variety Podcast

In today’s episode, Variety reporter Selome Hailu details her cover story on Rachel Sennott, the multi-faceted word behind HBO’s new comedy “I Love LA.” Marc Malkin has a Red Carpet Rundown with Sarah Michelle Gellar talking about Hulu’s ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ reboot. And reporter Giana Levy explains what superfans are seeing in Netflix’s ‘Love Is Blind.’

Hailu has been intrigued by Sennott’s work since he fresh out of NYU and gained attention for the 2020 micro-budget film “Shiva Baby” that made its way to Netflix. Sennott is emblematic of her generation of creative authors who built their first following through content shared on social media platforms.

“She is very conscious of her image,” says Hailu. “She had the experience of constantly going viral online and building a platform on social media, especially on Twitter, that preceded her career. And that was what she used to get meetings with executives and get stand-up gigs and really establish herself before really breaking into the industry.”

Sennott soon proved to be a master of marketing himself. Maybe even too good.

“One way to do that online, and to get that attention, is to play with your sexuality. And so we talked about the push and pull that she felt when she was having fun with that and being true to herself, but then also feeling like people were projecting onto her or thinking they knew her more deeply than they did,” Hailu notes. “She eventually left social media and that really helped ease those feelings. Over the last few years, she’s channeled all those conflicting and exciting thoughts about a young woman’s sexuality into her work. You see it in ‘Shiva Baby.’ You see it in it [2023 film] ‘Bottoms’ and you can really see that in ‘I Love LA’”

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