After side-splitting viral videos led to breakout films Bottoms and Shiva Baby, the star gets frank about the darker side of ‘making it’ with I Love LA – a show so funny that choosing a best gag is impossible

Rachel Sennott hops on to our Zoom call and immediately launches into an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, sounding pained. She is only a couple of minutes late, but she is keen to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, it’s exactly what a writer wants to hear at the start of an interview. Besides, it’s fairly unsurprising. Anyone who has watched the unapologetically queer, unapologetically crass film Bottoms – which Sennott co-wrote with Emma Seligman, and starred in alongside her friend, The Bear’s breakout star Ayo Edebiri – 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).

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and Sennott is, of course, a fan, citing the show alongside Sex and the City, Insecure and Atlanta as influences for her series, which follows the travails of an influencer, Tallulah (Odessa A’Zion) 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: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott started watching it during the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and decided to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.

Cash-strapped people forced to do shameful things because they’re desperate for money? How can this rot be real? If I recreated the idea in my local park, I’d surely end up in prison

There’s missing the point, and then there’s Netflix making its capitalism-skewing Korean hit about a ruthless contest into an actual gameshow. The producers of Squid Game: The Challenge have previously denied that’s what happened here, stating that, in fact, the series is also about camaraderie and how people work under pressure, and is, I quote, “a critique of how we are ingrained from childhood to be ultra-competitive”. Come on – it’s a reality show about people doing humiliating things because they’re desperate for money, based on a drama about people doing humiliating things because they’re desperate for money. If I rounded up a load of debt-ridden people and recreated Squid Game: The Challenge in my local park, I’m pretty sure I’d be put in prison.

The thing about Squid Game: The Challenge that makes it all OK (although really, none of it is OK) is that everyone here is completely mesmerised by the amount of money on offer. Its prize is among the largest in gameshow history, with the winner of series one, Mai Whelan, cashing a cheque for an extremely cool $4.56m (£3.47m). It’s the sort of money that makes people go gaga from the off, and the treachery is off the charts.