Rachel Sennott on ‘The Idol’ Controversy, ‘Bottoms’, and Twitter
Dress, Ralph Lauren Collection, $6,500. Earrings, ring, Van Cleef & Arpels, $7,700.
Somewhere in the deep recesses of the internet, there may be several videos of a college-age Rachel Sennott pretending to smoke cigarettes. As a fish out of water at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, surrounded by what she calls “more serious” actors, the Connecticut transplant felt compelled to audition for any student film that would take her in order to prove her acting chops. Given her impeccable comedic timing and knack for satirizing the most mundane aspects of millennial culture, the scenes usually turned out to be funny, even when they weren’t intended to be. Mainly, because Sennott doesn’t actually smoke. “I’m, like, coughing hysterically,” she says. “I just needed to do something, because I thought if I just did that program without anything else, I wasn’t gonna make it anywhere.”
Unnecessary spoiler alert: Sennott did just fine, thank you very much. Take, for instance, her magnetic performance navigating the controlled chaos of Emma Seligman’s 2020 film Shiva Baby, or her pithy, often improvised one-liners in A24’s 2022 horror thriller Bodies Bodies Bodies (“Your parents are upper…middle…class”). But the path to get there wasn’t a straight line. After getting her degree in 2018, without any job prospects, Sennott took to Twitter as a creative outlet for her jokes, ultimately gaining a steady following for embodying a chaotic, emotionally messy persona. Her “trailer for any movie set in L.A.,” in particular, went viral and garnered 9.3 million views. In the clip, Sennott, wearing a crop top, tiny sunglasses, and a chunky silver chain necklace, speaks invitingly to the camera: “Come on, it’s L.A.,” she quips, ironically against the musical backdrop “212” by Azealia Banks, named after an entirely different area code. “What? It’s L.A.! I’m addicted to drugs. We all are.”
Five years later, the now-27-year-old credits the video for landing her a starring role in Bodies. “Honestly, I feel like the funniest stuff happens off the cuff,” she reflects. “I was listening to ‘212’ with whoever I was dating at the time and basically just being annoying.” If being insufferable is Sennott’s brand, then she’s either a marketing genius or a really good actress, considering how relatable she is. Every accolade earned can be chalked up to her sheer talent and perseverance. With no genetic ties to Hollywood, the recent grad performed regularly at open mic nights around Manhattan, amassing a cult following in the alt scene and soon landing a digital series that she co-developed with her classmate, Ayo Edebiri, for Comedy Central. Ayo and Rachel Are Single chronicles the duo’s respective journeys in the dating world (think: app matches, ghosting, crash-and-burn double dates). The two took some liberties during the writing process, but the melancholy undertones admittedly weren’t all fiction. “I feel like I used to cry all the time when I was in school,” Sennott confesses. “I don’t know if it was hard, or if I was going through it emotionally, but clawing my way through rush hour at Trader Joe’s was just depressing.”
It helped to have someone going through it with her. “Ayo and I actually met while doing a sketch,” Sennott says of the IRL friends. “She was leaning against a wall not talking to anyone in a scene, and I couldn’t take it—I was laughing so hard and was immediately drawn to her. She’s just hilarious and always has been.” It makes sense, then, that Edebiri was the first to come to mind when Sennott was developing the script for the upcoming queer comedy Bottoms. Co-written with Seligman and produced by Elizabeth Banks, the film follows two high school girls who set up a fight club to get attention from cheerleaders, namely Kaia Gerber, who, despite being more known for her supermodel status, Sennott insists is “so funny” that she often repeats one of her lines to herself when she’s alone in her house. After rewatching Fight Club for research, Sennott’s initial thoughts of the David Fincher-directed satire were simple and conclusive: too many men, good outfits. “Not that people should do it in real life…” she starts to clarify, “but honestly, I’ll say it: fighting looks hot.”
Dress, Carolina Herrera, $3,990. Earrings, Van Cleef & Arpels. Sandals, Michael Kors Collection, $650.
The experience of helming a project from start to finish prompted Sennott to contemplate trying her hand at directing. “I always thought [directing] was intimidating, but being in this process made me feel like I can do it.” She cites some of her peers, like Molly Gordon, who recently made her feature directorial debut with the mockumentary Theater Camp (starring Ben Platt and Edebiri) at this year’s Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews.
But before that, there’s more of her to be seen onscreen, specifically in HBO’s long-delayed series The Idol from Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, premiering June 4. (She went straight to work on the L.A. set the day after wrapping Bottoms.) Regarding the rumored production issues, which according to an explosive report from Rolling Stone go beyond delays and script changes to disturbing sexual content, Sennott pleads the fifth: “As an actor, I’m not as privy to all of that,” she says, rather convincingly. She does say she’s a fan of Euphoria (“I need a Sunday night show”) and the use of non-aggressive improv on The Idol set (“It was such a natural process where you discovered things about your character as you were working in a very refreshing way”). And she enjoyed working with Abel Tesfaye, a.k.a. The Weeknd. “Honestly, Abel is amazing,” she says. “I’ve been a fan of his music for so long, but I had seen him as a huge pop star who sings all these sexy songs. The character he plays onstage is so different from who he is—he’s just silly and fun to riff with.” And, it turns out, a big fan of craft services, too. “He’ll be like, ‘I heard there are new snacks.’”
Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Pete Davidson, and Rachel Sennott in Bodies Bodies Bodies.
It wouldn’t be the first time Sennott made friends with her co-stars. During the making of Bodies, she acted alongside new couple Pete Davidson and Chase Sui Wonders, who met while filming. She even accompanied the pair on a throuple date to a Rangers Game at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in December 2022, which sent social media into a tizzy. For the most part, Sennott was cropped out of the photos. Of the environment on set, and the budding relationship between Davidson and Wonders, she says, “Honestly, I think there was something about being in a house together where it’s kind of like camp. With the rain and the blood, when you get all wet together, you get hypothermia, and that creates a new level of bonding.”
In terms of her current internet imprint, Sennott has no plans to return to Twitter anytime soon—but she’s grateful the platform gave her a voice when the entertainment industry wouldn’t. “If someone tells me they’ve read my tweets since the early days, I feel like I know them; they know my highs and lows for sure. My style of humor was so personal and very open, which I’m not against at all,” she pauses to gather her thoughts, then continues. “I wanted to give myself a little space from that and let myself grow in a different direction. I think I’m at a better place in my life now. You can still be funny when you’re happy.” But even so, she’s kept the receipts, just in case. “I have a bunch [of tweets] in my drafts folder that would make great script notes.”
Hair by Vernon François for Redken; makeup by Karo Kangas for Westman Atelier; produced by Rhianna Rule.
A version of this story appears in the May 2023 issue of ELLE.
Deputy Editor
Claire Stern is the Deputy Editor of ELLE.com. Previously, she served as Editor at Bergdorf Goodman. Her interests include fashion, food, travel, music, Peloton, and The Hills—not necessarily in that order. She used to have a Harriet the Spy notebook and isn’t ashamed to admit it.