Rachel Sennott

Rachel Anne Sennott[1] was born on September 19, 1995.[2] She is of Italian descent,[3] and was raised Catholic.[4] She is from Simsbury, Connecticut[5] but based in New York City.[6] She graduated the Simsbury High School, in the year 2014. She currently resides in Los Angeles.

Sennott became interested in comedy as a freshman in college, when she dated a man interested in stand-up.[7] She studied acting at NYU Tisch and graduated in 2017.[8][9] During college she continued to perform comedy at open mic nights, as well as acting in student films, including the lead role of Danielle in the 2017 short film version of Emma Seligman's Shiva Baby; she reprised this role in the 2020 feature film adaptation. In 2018, feeling out of control of her fledgling career, she turned to Twitter comedy, writing short jokes and tweeting multiple in a day, creating her own voice.[7] She told Nylon that she did not enjoy the Manhattan open mic scene, feeling that people were laughing at her rather than with her, and quickly moved into the alt scene with a regular gig on It's A Guy Thing.[8] She then developed her own shows in 2018, Puke Fest and Ur Gonna Slp Rlly Well Tonight.[10] Puke Fest combines stand-up sets with a drinking game,[11] and moved to Instagram Live during the COVID-19 pandemic.[5] Her distinct comedic voice, a "messy" persona often complaining about dating and the economy, quickly became popular in the alt scene;[8] in 2019, she was named one of the six best comedians of the alt scene on lists from both Time Out New York and Pop Dust, citing her unique satirical takes on aspects of millennial life and culture.[12][13] She satirizes other elements of culture, with some of her most popular bits including a video about the LA movie culture[8][14] and one about baby-obsessed young women.[15] A sound clip from her LA video is sampled at the beginning of the song "Bump This" by Michael Medrano, Jake Germain, and Michete.[16]

On television, Sennott has starred in HBO's High Maintenance,[7] and plays Jackie Raines on Call Your Mother.[17] She is also developing Comedy Central series with Ayo Edebiri,[7][8] and their shows Ayo and Rachel Are Single and Taking the Stage began airing on the network in 2020.[18][19] She also appears with Edebiri and other comedians on the web comedy-documentary series Speak Up, seeking to amplify female voices about working in comedy.[20][21] In film, she has starred in the 2020 feature films Tahara as Hannah Rosen,[22] and Shiva Baby as Danielle. Both films focus on queer Jewish coming of age narratives at funeral services, though Sennott is not queer or Jewish.[23][24]

In the lead role of Danielle in Shiva Baby, which premiered at SXSW and TIFF in 2020, Sennott's performance was highlighted in several reviews,[25][26][27] with Andrew Parker of The GATE saying that she gave "a wonderful, star making performance"[28] and Alex de Vore of the Santa Fe Reporter writing that "after her performance in [the film], she should probably just be allowed to do whatever she wants – she's a natural."[29] Sennott was named one of the seventeen best performances of TIFF 2020 by Seventh Row,[30] and won the Rising Star award at the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival.[31]

She was part of the popularization of front-facing camera comedy during COVID-19 pandemic quarantines,[5] and coining the term "soft launching" to describe tagging new relationships on Instagram without explicitly announcing them,[32] later revealing it to be in reference to one of the hosts of popular podcast The Ion Pod.[33] In June 2020 she took part in a livestream benefiting the Black Trans Travel Fund.[34] She has been an inspiration to younger comedians looking to launch careers through social media.[35]

• Rachel Sennott at IMDb