“It’s for girls and gays!” Rachel Sinnott talks about the hilarious comedy about the magic of Gen Z life | television

RAchille Sinnott jumps into our Zoom call and immediately begins an apology. “Oh my god – I’m sorry!” She says looking hurt. She’s only a few minutes late, but she’s eager to explain. “I have such a problem, because Chatter On the phone. I had received a couple of calls before that, and I was like, I have to stop talking! Fortunately, this is exactly what the writer wants to hear at the beginning of the interview. Besides, it’s not somewhat surprising. Anyone who’s seen the strange, unapologetically raw Bottoms — which Sinnott co-wrote with Emma Seligman and stars alongside her friend, The Bear’s rising star Ayo Edebiri — will already know that she has a lot to say, whether it’s about gender, sexuality, or the merits of starting a high school fight club. And by the end of her new eight-part HBO series, “I Love Los Angeles,” it’s clear she has more to say about the darker side of Gen Z life (at 30, she’s made an honorary member of the gang, a millennial by the tale’s end, and has a knack for cross-generational connection).

Comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable, and Sennott is, of course, a fan, citing the show along with Sex and the City, Insecure and Atlanta as influences on her series, which follows the travails of influencer Tallulah (Odessa A’Zion) and her friend and fledgling talent manager, Maia (Sennott). Perhaps the biggest spot on the mood board is Entourage, an HBO comedy about an up-and-coming A-list actor making his way in an often seedy Hollywood (chosen quote: “Nobody’s happy in this town except the losers”). Sinnott started watching it during the pandemic, became “obsessed,” and decided to give it a special twist “for girls and gays.”

“I wanted to do a show where the Internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The idea for I Love LA came – in part – from her move, initially tense, to Tinseltown and from her return to Saturn, an event much talked about by astrology chiefs. It was a time where I learned some big life lessons, both professionally and personally. “In my early 20s, I was very chaotic, crying openly everywhere all the time,” she says. “In my mid-20s, I moved to Los Angeles and settled down. Then I felt like everything was starting to fall apart. It was almost like these written exams…”

Sennott grew up in Connecticut, and began writing and performing comedy while studying acting at New York University’s (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and it just wasn’t working out,” she says. “I signed up for all the NYU comedy troupes, and I got rejected from all of them. I signed up for all the NYU plays and I couldn’t get into any of them. And I felt like, what am I doing here?”

Sinnott took matters into her own hands, performing at open mics with Edebiri and posting hysterical (and decidedly bizarre) comedy videos online. The first, Baby Cult, followed a group of women obsessed with pregnancy; Another imagines working at the Hollister clothing store as if he were trapped in a horror movie. In a neat twist of fate, she met Seligman through the college film scene and ended up starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set in a Jewish aftermath with shades of uncut gems. She says the main theme of her career is that people her age give her a chance, not the industry as a whole. So, not gatekeepers? “no “The gatekeepers,” she repeats, adding with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”

Anyone who had doubts about Sinnott would surely be kicking themselves now. In what she describes as a “wild and total” turn of events, she appears to have manifested the vehicle of her dreams. In 2019, she posted a video online titled “It’s L.A.,” in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“I’m a drug addict — we all are”). Six years later, she co-starred in a comedy (with Emma Barry) about Angelenos balancing the perks of Internet fame (like partying at Elijah Wood’s house) and its pitfalls (accusing your client of being a drug-addicted thief and potentially becoming a “brand-unsafe” pariah). It would be easy to make a show about internet fame that is terribly ambitious – or worse, one that attacks its subjects. I Love Los Angeles doesn’t do that either, making a portrait of privileged twenty-something life that’s frank about its glamour.

“There were a lot of shows that portrayed young people and their relationship with the internet in this condescending and hateful way,” she says. “I think young people have been through a lot — I think mostly about people younger than me, like my little sister, who went to college during COVID, so she had to go home, or my other sister who was studying online.” “These days, that doesn’t happen,” she says I feel like The world is collapsing – the world He is It collapses. You reach a point where it becomes frustrating, and makes you nihilistic. The internet can be bad and good, she says, “but I feel like it’s never really treated with nuance – it’s like you’re looking at these frivolous idiots on their phones.” I wanted to approach it in a way where I wasn’t judging the characters. They are obviously comedic characters, but I tried to look at them all with sympathy.

Although it does not offer a full Marxist critique, I Love LA meditates on the limits of the influencer economy, and the hidden costs of maintaining appearances. When we first meet Tallulah, she’s living a lavish lifestyle — complete with a bootleg Balenciaga bag — but she’s broke, and her online life is nothing more than social media smoke and mirrors. “A bunch of free goods are sent to people who are influential, but maybe they can’t afford the rent,” Sinnott says. “I’m not saying they have worse problems than anyone in the world. But part of what we wanted to show is that everyone is trying to do better than they actually are, and pull back the curtain.” Variety wondered why we didn’t actually see Tallulah’s content on screen, but Sennott didn’t think it was necessary. “No one wants to watch 30 minutes of someone editing a TikTok video,” she says. Moreover, “you see [Odessa] She walks in front of the camera and goes, yeah: that’s the girl! She just has charisma. I don’t care if she sells canned fish or if she has a podcast!

As well as its direct observations, I Love LA is very funny, often silly drinking your coffee, and has a lot of emotion. Picking out funny moments is tough – since there are so many of them – but the reveal of one of the influencers as a “kid in prison” whose family used to own Rikers Island prison is high on the list, as is the meltdown that occurs to the sound of “All Star” by Smash Mouth. In an episode inspired by an extremely painful medical emergency that Sinnott suffered in real life, Maya pretends to be Jewish to skip the hospital queue for “open toe surgery.” Curb Your Enthusiasm too, but also Rachel Sinnott, who is often mistaken for being Jewish, perhaps fueled by Shiva Baby (she’s actually from a Catholic family of Irish and Italian descent). Elsewhere, the friendship at the heart of the series is toxic and often codependent, but it’s also steeped in the kind of pick-up where we left off warmth that only old friends can have. “I think you see the beauty [Maia and Tallulah’s] “The relationship too,” she says. “I hope it’s not just aggressive feelings!”

The transition from film to television was a learning curve, helped by the likes of Lorene Scafaria (Hustlers, Succession), who was an executive producer and directed two of the episodes. But it’s clear that Sinnott was a challenge that he and the rest of the cast rose to. “I could scream at everyone,” she smiles. “There were no weak links. Everyone shines.” And of course, she shines as well, drawing on everything that has led her to this moment to deliver a leadership performance that is as heartbreaking as it is side-splitting.

How do you feel about the city that made all this possible? “I was there for five years, which is when everyone says it’s starting to get cool – and damn, is it cool!” She says. “So, yeah – now I love LA!”