The performer enters the digital interview and at once launches into an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, seeming truly remorseful. Although she's only a couple of minutes delayed, she wants to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, in this context, that’s just what one hopes to experience. Moreover, it’s fairly unsurprising. Those who have seen her fearlessly LGBTQ+ and brash project titled Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with Emma Seligman and starred in alongside close companion Ayo Edebiri—can be aware that she holds much to discuss, whether on gender, relationships, or the merits of starting a teen combat group. Furthermore, once you finish the latest eight-part show titled I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has further insights regarding the struggles of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott represents a bridge of the gang, straddling eras skilled for straddling both generations).
Influences and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and Sennott admits to being a fan, referencing it together with Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as guides for I Love LA, which details the travails of online personality Tallulah and her friend who is also aspiring talent manager Maia. However, the largest spot on creative vision belonged to the HBO series, the HBO sitcom focusing on an up-and-coming Hollywood star succeeding in a corrupt Hollywood (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott discovered it during COVID-19, became “captivated”, and chose to add a fresh perspective on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she explains. The inspiration for the series emerged—in part—from personal, at first rocky, relocation to LA and from the saturn return, a popular event for followers. It was a time that saw her learn major insights, in her career and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Early Beginnings
Raised in the East Coast, Sennott commenced writing and performing comedy while enrolled in performance at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She decided to act independently, taking the stage at live shows with Ayo and uploading uproarious (and distinctly) unconventional skits on the internet. One, Baby Cult, centered on characters obsessively obsessed with having babies; a different one portrayed being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as similar to being trapped in a thriller. By chance, she connected with Seligman through campus film circles and eventually featuring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a Jewish wake with shades of the intense thriller. The big theme of her career, she explains, has been peers giving her a shot, instead of traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, continuing with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who had doubts regarding her previously will surely be feeling foolish currently. In what she describes as a “astonishingly complete” development, she appears to achieved her dream vehicle. In 2019 she shared a clip titled on LA life on social media, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a comedy about city dwellers juggling advantages of internet fame (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being suspected of being a substance-abusing stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). It would be tempting to make a program about internet celebrity that was extremely aspirational—or, more problematic, one that belittled at the characters. I Love LA steers clear of each, resulting in a portrait of privileged young adult existence that’s candid about the mess 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 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
