The star joins the digital interview and right away starts an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, appearing genuinely apologetic. Despite being only a couple of minutes delayed, she wants to clarify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, in this context, that’s just what is ideal to hear. Moreover, it’s quite expected. Those who have seen her fearlessly openly gay and outspoken project Bottoms—which she co-wrote with Emma Seligman and starred in alongside close companion Ayo Edebiri—would understand that Sennott holds much to share, ranging from on gender, sex, or the merits of creating a teen brawl society. And, after watching her latest multi-episode program I Love LA, it is clear that she holds further thoughts regarding the struggles of modern youth (Now in her thirties, Sennott serves as a bridge to younger audiences, straddling eras adept for connecting both generations).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and the actress admits to being a fan, naming it together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for her series, which tracks the travails of a social media star Tallulah and close companion and new agent Maia. However, the most significant influence on creative vision belonged to the popular sitcom, the HBO sitcom depicting an emerging Hollywood star making his way in a corrupt entertainment industry (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She started watching it amid the pandemic, became “captivated”, and resolved to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she explains. The inspiration for I Love LA originated—in part—from her own, initially rocky, relocation to Los Angeles and from the saturn return, a popular occurrence for followers. It was a phase that included her learn major life lessons, professionally and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Humble Origins
Raised in the East Coast, Sennott started writing and performing humor while studying theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, performing at open mics with Edebiri and uploading uproarious (and very) bizarre online content online. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women obsessively fixated on having babies; another imagined being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being stuck in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Emma through campus film circles and ended up featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a Jewish wake with hints of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her path, she says, has been peers supporting her, instead of the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she confirms, adding humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Career Breakthrough
Those who questioned regarding her then will surely be feeling foolish currently. In what she calls a “wild, full-circle” development, she has created an ideal role. In 2019 she posted a video called “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she parodied movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a comedy about LA residents managing benefits of internet fame (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being suspected of being a substance-abusing criminal, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). One might easy to create a series about internet celebrity that was horribly idealized—or, more problematic, one that mocked at the characters. This show steers clear of each, making for a representation of advantaged twentysomething living that’s honest about the mess and the glamour.
Empathetic Approach
“Many programs portray youth and online life with disdain and mockery,” she comments. “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
