The star joins the digital interview and at once starts an apology. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, appearing truly regretful. Although she's only slightly late, she wants to explain. “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, during an interview, that’s exactly what one hopes to encounter. Besides, it’s fairly predictable. Viewers who know her fearlessly openly gay and unapologetically crass movie titled Bottoms—that she penned with Emma Seligman and featured in with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—can already know that Sennott possesses plenty to share, be it on gender, intimacy, or the merits of starting a high-school brawl society. Plus, after watching the latest eight-part program titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she holds further insights on the darker side of modern youth (As a millennial, Sennott is a relatable figure of the gang, straddling eras adept for straddling different age groups).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott is enthusiastic, citing the show in addition to the HBO hit, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for the project, which details the struggles of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also aspiring representative portrayed by Sennott. However, the most significant spot on concept went to the popular sitcom, the show focusing on an up-and-coming celebrity making his way in a corrupt LA scene (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She discovered it during lockdown, became “hooked”, and chose to create a new version 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 says. The idea for this project originated—in part—from personal, originally rocky, relocation to Los Angeles and from the astrological phase, a frequently discussed event for enthusiasts. That period marked an era that saw her understand major insights, in her career and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” 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 Connecticut, Sennott began writing and performing comedy while pursuing theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she states. “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?”
Sennott decided to act independently, appearing at amateur nights with her friend and posting uproarious (and very) bizarre online content online. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted several females intensely drawn to pregnancy; another portrayed working at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being caught in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Emma through campus film circles and ended up appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a religious event with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her career, she says, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, instead of the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, continuing humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Those who questioned regarding Sennott then will surely be kicking themselves currently. In what she calls a “incredibly circular” development, she has manifested an ideal role. Previously she uploaded content named on LA life on social media, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a comedy about city dwellers balancing benefits of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being accused of being a substance-abusing stealer, and perhaps becoming a unreliable outcast). It would be tempting to make a series about internet celebrity that was overly glamorous—or, more problematic, one that punched down at its subjects. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a portrait of affluent twentysomething living that’s candid about the chaos 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 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
