The star enters the video call and at once launches into an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, sounding really regretful. Despite being only a couple of minutes late, she feels compelled to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, during an interview, this is precisely what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s quite unsurprising. Viewers who know the unapologetically openly gay and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—which she collaborated on with Emma Seligman and featured in with close companion the talented actress—will understand that she has a lot to discuss, ranging from on gender, sex, or the appeal of creating a youth combat group. And, by the end her new eight-part show I Love LA, viewers realize that she carries additional thoughts on the darker side of young adulthood (At 30, she is a bridge to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial with a knack for connecting millennials and Gen Z).
Influences and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott readily acknowledges a fan, citing the show together with Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and the innovative program as influences for the project, which follows the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and ally and aspiring representative portrayed by Sennott. However, the biggest presence on concept went to Entourage, the HBO sitcom depicting a rising A-list actor making his way in an often-seedy Hollywood (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She discovered it during the pandemic, became “hooked”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she notes. The inspiration for this project originated—partly—from personal, at first fractious, move to LA and from the astrological phase, a popular phenomenon for followers. It was a time that involved her grasp some big insights, professionally and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Early Beginnings
Raised in Connecticut, Sennott started developing and showcasing humor while enrolled in theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
She decided to act independently, appearing at live shows with Edebiri and uploading hilarious (and very) unconventional skits online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically fixated on motherhood; another portrayed being employed at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being caught in a horror film. By chance, she connected with Seligman through the university’s film scene and ultimately featuring in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her journey, she says, has been people her own age supporting her, instead of established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she confirms, continuing with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Career Breakthrough
Anyone who questioned about her then will likely be kicking themselves now. Through she calls a “astonishingly complete” development, she has achieved the perfect project. Previously she posted content called about Los Angeles online, in which she parodied movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a series about Angelenos juggling benefits of internet fame (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being labeled as being a intoxicated thief, and possibly becoming a risky outcast). It would be easy to produce a series about internet celebrity that was overly glamorous—or, worse, one that belittled at the characters. This show steers clear of each, creating a representation of privileged twentysomething existence that’s candid about the mess and the shine.
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
