The star enters the video call and at once launches into an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, seeming truly remorseful. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she wants to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, in this context, this is just what is ideal to encounter. Additionally, it’s fairly predictable. Anyone familiar with the fearlessly LGBTQ+ and outspoken project Bottoms—which she penned with Emma Seligman and starred in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—can understand that Sennott possesses a lot to say, ranging from about roles, intimacy, or the appeal of creating a youth brawl society. And, by the end the recent seasonal show titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star has additional thoughts about the challenges of modern youth (Now in her thirties, she is an honorary member for this generation, a tale-end millennial skilled for straddling both generations).
Guiding Lights and Creative Vision
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress admits to being enthusiastic, naming it in addition to the classic series, Insecure and the innovative program as guides for the project, which tracks the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also new representative Maia. However, the largest influence on the moodboard was reserved for the HBO series, that HBO sitcom depicting an emerging A-list actor navigating in an often-seedy LA scene (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott discovered it throughout COVID-19, became “captivated”, and decided to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she explains. The concept for I Love LA originated—partly—from personal, initially fractious, move to Los Angeles and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about phenomenon for followers. This represented a phase that involved her grasp major life lessons, in her career and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Starting Out
Brought up in Connecticut, the star began writing and performing comedy while enrolled in theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, appearing at amateur nights with her friend and posting uproarious (and decidedly) bizarre skits on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed a group of women intensely obsessed with motherhood; a different one envisioned working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being stuck in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually featuring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a religious event with echoes of the intense thriller. The central motif of her path, she says, has been people her own age offering opportunities, instead of traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, continuing with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Rising Success
Those who had doubts about her earlier will certainly be kicking themselves now. As part of she describes as a “incredibly circular” development, she appears to manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she posted a video titled “it’s LA” online, in which she lampooned movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s executive producer (with Emma Barrie) of a series about city dwellers juggling the perks of online celebrity (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your associate being accused of being a substance-abusing stealer, and potentially becoming a unreliable pariah). One might simple to create a series about digital influence that was overly aspirational—or, worse, one that mocked at those depicted. The series avoids both, making for a depiction of affluent young adult living that’s frank about the grot and the appeal.
Empathetic Approach
“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” she observes. “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
