The star appears on the digital interview and at once begins an explanation. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, sounding really apologetic. She is only a bit late, she needs to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, for a writer, this is exactly what one hopes to experience. Moreover, it’s pretty expected. Anyone familiar with the fearlessly LGBTQ+ and outspoken project Bottoms—which she collaborated on with her creative partner and featured in alongside her friend Ayo Edebiri—will already know that she possesses a lot to say, ranging from on gender, relationships, or the merits of starting a teen fight club. Furthermore, by the end her recent eight-part program I Love LA, it is clear that the star holds further insights on the challenges of young adulthood (As a millennial, she represents a relatable figure of the gang, straddling eras skilled for connecting different age groups).
Influences and Artistic Direction
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, citing it together with Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Atlanta as influences for her series, which details the struggles of an influencer Tallulah and close companion and fledgling agent portrayed by Sennott. Notably, the most significant spot on concept belonged to the HBO series, the program focusing on an up-and-coming Hollywood star making his way in a gritty LA scene (notable statement: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She started watching it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and chose to put her own twist on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The idea for the series came—in part—from firsthand, initially difficult, move to Tinseltown and from her astrological phase, a popular occurrence for enthusiasts. It was a phase that included her grasp significant truths, professionally and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Humble Origins
Raised in New England, Sennott began creating and acting comedy while pursuing performance at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She seized control, performing at amateur nights with her friend and posting hilarious (and very) bizarre skits digitally. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on characters fetishistically fixated on having babies; a different one envisioned working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being caught in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through campus film circles and eventually featuring in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her career, she notes, has been peers giving her a shot, instead of established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, continuing humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Career Breakthrough
Individuals who were skeptical about her earlier will likely be feeling foolish now. In what she labels a “astonishingly complete” development, she has achieved her dream vehicle. In 2019 she uploaded a clip named “it’s LA” on social media, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about Angelenos juggling advantages of online celebrity (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being labeled as being a intoxicated criminal, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). One might tempting to produce a series about internet celebrity that was overly glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at those depicted. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a portrait of affluent millennial existence that’s frank about the grot and the glamour.
Balanced Perspective
“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” she says. “I think that young people have been through a lot – I’m mostly thinking of people younger than me, like my little sister, who went to college during Covid, so she had to come home, or my other sister who was doing school online.”|“The younger generation has faced significant
