In today’s episode, Variety Reporter Selome Heil breaks down her cover story about multi-hyphenate Rachel Sennott on HBO’s new comedy, “I Love LA.” Marc Malkin joins Sarah Michelle Gellar on the red carpet to talk about Hulu’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot. And reporter Gianna Levy explains how superfans are watching Netflix’s Love is Blind.
Hail had been intrigued by Sennot’s work since he had just graduated from New York University and was gaining traction with his 2020 micro-budget feature film “Shiva Baby,” which debuted on Netflix. Sennott is emblematic of a generation of writer-creatives who first gained a following through content shared on social media platforms.
“She’s very intentional about her image,” Heil says. “Prior to her career, she always had the experience of being talked about online and building a platform on social media, especially Twitter. And she used that to establish herself, taking meetings with executives and doing stand-up gigs, before really entering the industry.”
Sennott quickly proved to be a master of marketing. Maybe he’s too good at it.
“The way to do that online and get noticed is to play around with your sexuality, so we talked about the push and pull she felt in having fun with her sexuality and being true to herself, but also feeling like people were projecting onto her and thinking they knew more about her than they did,” Heil observes. “Eventually, she quit social media, and that really helped ease those feelings. In the last few years, she’s put all these contradictory and provocative ideas about young women’s sexuality into her work, and you see that in ‘Shiva Baby.'” You see that in (2023 film) The Bottoms, and you really see that in I Love LA. ”
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