The performer enters the online meeting and immediately begins an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, seeming genuinely remorseful. Although she's only a couple of minutes late, she needs to clarify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Luckily, for a writer, that’s just what one hopes to encounter. Besides, it’s quite expected. Viewers who have seen the unapologetically LGBTQ+ and unapologetically crass film Bottoms—that she penned with Emma Seligman and appeared in with her friend Ayo Edebiri—will be aware that Sennott possesses a lot to share, whether about gender, sex, or the pros of starting a teen brawl society. And, once you finish her recent eight-part HBO series titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star carries additional insights about the challenges of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott is a relatable figure of the gang, straddling eras skilled for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Creative Vision
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show naturally arise and Sennott is an admirer, referencing it together with the HBO hit, the acclaimed comedy and Atlanta as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the struggles of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also new representative Maia. Notably, the most significant influence on the moodboard belonged to Entourage, the show about an emerging celebrity succeeding in a corrupt LA scene (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it during the pandemic, became “captivated”, and decided 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 notes. The idea for I Love LA came—to some extent—from her own, initially rocky, relocation to Tinseltown and from the astrological phase, a much-talked-about phenomenon for astrology heads. That period marked an era that saw her grasp some big truths, professionally and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Early Beginnings
Growing up in the East Coast, the star commenced creating and acting stand-up while enrolled in theatre at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she states. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She took matters into her own hands, performing at amateur nights with Ayo and posting hilarious (and distinctly) unconventional skits on the internet. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on characters obsessively obsessed with pregnancy; another portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as like being caught in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she met Seligman through the university’s film scene and ultimately featuring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her path, she says, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, rather than the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, stating with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Rising Success
Anyone who had doubts regarding Sennott then will likely be regretting it today. Through she labels a “astonishingly complete” development, she appears to achieved the perfect project. Previously she posted a clip named about Los Angeles online, in which she parodied film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about LA residents balancing advantages of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your client being accused of being a substance-abusing thief, and perhaps becoming a risky pariah). It would be simple to produce a program about internet celebrity that was extremely glamorous—or, worse, one that mocked at the characters. The series avoids both, resulting in a portrait of privileged millennial living that’s candid about the chaos 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
