Rachel Sennott is headed to Australia next week. The New York-based I Love LA star and writer has booked a key supporting role in Matt Ross’ feature Kockroach, joining Chris Hemsworth, Taron Egerton, Zazie Beetz and Alec Baldwin.
The project is a crime picture set in New York, and it’s based on William Lashner’s novel. The plot centers on a mysterious stranger who pushes his way into the city’s criminal underworld, somehow transforming himself into a larger-than-life boss in a place where power is everything. Ross directs from a screenplay by Jonathan Ames, with revisions by Ross—so, yeah, it has that mix of voices that sometimes comes with exactly one too many drafts.
There’s also, as the description makes clear, a supernatural twist that sounds like it’s built for genre fans. Lashner’s book is a re-imagining of Franz Kafka’s classic Metamorphosis, in which a man wakes up to find he’s been transformed into a cockroach. Hearing that, you can almost imagine the first day of filming—maybe the air smells like sunscreen and hot pavement before the cameras even roll.
Andrew Lazar and Christina Weiss Lurie are producing. Black Bear will continue selling international rights at the upcoming Cannes market, and CAA Media Finance and Range Select co-rep domestic. It’s one of those setups where the cast gets the headlines, but the business side is moving in parallel.
For Sennott, this doesn’t appear to be a full detour from what she’s already working on. She’s currently leading the writers room on season two of HBO hit I Love LA, which is expected to shoot this year. Her role in Kockroach isn’t expected to take her away from the series for long—though, honestly, “not expected” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Beyond that, Sennott recently co-created and executive-produced Big Mistakes alongside Dan Levy for Netflix, and she’s co-writing the script for The Heidi Fleiss Story, starring Aubrey Plaza. Her film roles include Shiva Baby, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Saturday Night, Bottoms and A24’s recent Sundance pic The Moment. She’s represented by WME, OPE Partners, and Yorn, Levine.
So now the question becomes how all of that momentum fits with a Kafka-adjacent crime story where a cockroach transformation isn’t exactly metaphorical. Or maybe it is—actually, not sure yet. Either way, next week’s start in Australia will be the first real test of where Kockroach lands in the chaos between comedy credits and crime pressure.
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