The star appears on the digital interview and immediately starts an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, seeming truly remorseful. Despite being only slightly delayed, she needs to clarify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, for a writer, that’s just what one hopes to experience. Besides, it’s pretty predictable. Viewers who have seen her boldly queer and unapologetically crass movie Bottoms—that she collaborated on with the director and appeared in with her friend the talented actress—can understand that she holds a lot to discuss, whether about roles, intimacy, or the pros of creating a youth brawl society. And, once you finish her new eight-part program titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she has further perspectives about the darker side of Gen Z life (As a millennial, Sennott serves as a bridge for this generation, a tale-end millennial with a knack for straddling both generations).
Inspirations and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and the actress readily acknowledges enthusiastic, referencing the show alongside the classic series, Insecure and Atlanta as inspirations for the project, which tracks the travails of online personality Tallulah and her friend who is also new talent manager Sennott’s character. Notably, the biggest spot on creative vision belonged to the popular sitcom, the HBO sitcom about a rising Hollywood star making his way in an often-seedy Hollywood (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She started watching it during lockdown, became “hooked”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective 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 concept for I Love LA came—in part—from personal, originally difficult, relocation to LA and from the saturn return, a frequently discussed phenomenon for followers. This represented a time that saw her grasp some big insights, professionally and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Early Beginnings
Growing up in the East Coast, Sennott started developing and showcasing comedy while studying performance at a prestigious arts school. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she states. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at open mics with Edebiri and posting hilarious (and decidedly) unconventional skits on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed characters fetishistically drawn to having babies; a different one imagined working at a trendy retail outlet as like being caught in a scary movie. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ended up starring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a Jewish wake with hints of Uncut Gems. The central motif of her path, she says, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, continuing with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Career Breakthrough
Those who were skeptical regarding her previously will surely be regretting it today. Through she calls a “wild, full-circle” story, she appears to created an ideal role. In 2019 she shared content named on LA life online, in which she parodied film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a show about Angelenos managing benefits of online celebrity (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable persona non grata). Some could simple to make a show about internet celebrity that was overly aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at those depicted. The series does neither, creating a portrait of privileged twentysomething life that’s frank about the grot and the appeal.
Balanced Perspective
“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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
