It takes a special kind of performer to play both a teenage-dirtbag lesbian who starts a fight club to get girls and a twentysomething nanny who’s recovering from PTSD while deciding whether or not to look for the missing girl she used to look after. It takes an even more impressive one to do both at the same festival. They don’t call Rachel Sennott the queen of South by Southwest for nothing. SXSW has loved Sennott for a while, but this year’s back-to-back releases feel different. This year feels like her official coronation as one of the most interesting performers in a generation.
Sennott’s two premieres at this year’s SXSW, Bottoms and I Used to Be Funny, could not be more different. But together, they represent what unites her performances at their best—a natural humanity that somehow shines through all of her characters’ eccentricities and grievances. They also outline just how much range she really has; Bottoms, which she co-wrote, is a mad-cap sexcapade á la Superbad, while I Used to Be Funny is a quieter (although still surprisingly funny) exploration of trauma.
Sennott’s seat on the festival throne has been years in the making. In 2018, she landed at SXSW with the short-film version of director Emma Seligman’s 2020 comedy Shiva Baby. (As director Seligman noted on stage at this year’s festival, Shiva Baby’s feature debut at SXSW never happened, because the festival was forced to cancel due to COVID-19.) Last year, Sennott returned to once again suffocate audiences with laughter during the premiere of Bodies Bodies Bodies. And this year she’s back with not one but two films—Seligman’s Shiva Baby follow-up, the raunchy and intentionally, deliriously nonsensical Bottoms, and the comedic drama I Used to Be Funny. As an amusing bonus, this year’s SXSW line-up also includes Appendage—a feature adaptation of a Hulu Halloween short starring, you guessed it, Sennott. (Hadley Robinson takes Sennott’s role in the feature version.)
Sennott co-wrote Bottoms with Seligman and performs opposite Ayo Edebiri, with whom she also made the Comedy Central web series Ayo and Rachel Are Single. Here, Sennot plays PJ, a foul-mouthed high school student who, alongside her best friend, Josie (Edebiri) is woefully unpopular. Desperate to have sex before they graduate, PJ and Josie start a self defense “fight club” at school after neglecting to deny a rumor that they both served time in juvenile detention.
The film, like Shiva Baby and Bodies Bodies Bodies, makes a perfect showcase for Sennott’s impeccable comedic timing. The script’s rat-a-tat rhythm shows off her comedic metabolism as well; as she rattles off line after line, she always seems to have eight alternative jokes on reserve. Its absurdist humor also allows for Sennott’s particular brand of deadpan sincerity to shine through.
During a recent profile interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sennott noted that sharing a writing credit on Bottoms added to the pressure of its debut: “All of a sudden not only are you worried about what people think of your performance, every line you’re like, ‘Did they like that? Did they like this?’” Moviegoers lined up around the block on Saturday to see the film’s SXSW premiere—and given the raucous laughter that ripped through the cinema seemingly without end, they did like it.
Then there’s I Used to Be Funny from writer-director Ally Pankiw, a film that replaces Bottoms’ bubbly nihilism with a clear, relentless thesis. Sennott plays a stand-up comedian named Sam, who has spent months paralyzed by trauma-induced depression. Her roommates are supportive but understandably worried, especially as Sam starts to fixate on a young girl she used to nanny who recently went missing. Sam’s trauma is clearly linked to whatever ended her child-sitting tenure, but until partway through the movie it’s unclear what happened.
I Used to Be Funny pushes Sennott into new emotional territory. As we observe Sam in the past and present, Sennott makes clear what her trauma has cost her—at least, in the short-term. In flashbacks, she’s a magnetic chatterbox who seems to be able to put anyone at ease. When she first meets Brooke (Olga Petsa), the sullen 12-year-old she’s hired to babysit, she manages to charm her with Twilight jokes and gentle kindness. Her stand-up focuses on sexual politics and gender, and when she’s on stage, she comes alive.
Things have changed since then. In the present day, Sam doesn’t want to see or talk to basically anyone; she’s agoraphobic and exhausted. She struggles with personal hygiene, and she can’t talk to her former boyfriend anymore. Sam never indicates that she wants to die, but she’s clearly also not sure how to live anymore. In one of the film’s most heartbreaking scenes, she shouts through tears that, on top of everything else, “I’m not even funny anymore!”
In this role, we see a new side of Sennott. She toggles seamlessly between humor and heaviness, with a keen understanding of how each tends to underlie the other. Her performance is raw; where other performers might lean into theatrics, Sennott lets her character quietly ache like an open wound.
Sennott specializes in playing warts-and-all characters like these, and her casual approach never seems to beg for audiences’ approval. Perhaps that’s why it’s so easy to like her. Regardless of the reason, however, Sennott’s appeal is now undeniable—especially after two sold-out festival screenings. Whatever she does next (like Holland, Michigan, which will pair her with fellow multi-faceted powerhouse Nicole Kidman), it seems guaranteed that we’ll all be watching.
