The performer enters the video call and at once starts an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, appearing truly apologetic. Although she's only a bit delayed, she feels compelled to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, in this context, that’s exactly what is ideal to hear. Additionally, it’s fairly predictable. Viewers who know her fearlessly LGBTQ+ and unapologetically crass project Bottoms—that she collaborated on with Emma Seligman and starred in together with her friend Ayo Edebiri—will understand that Sennott possesses much to share, ranging from on identity, sex, or the appeal of forming a high-school combat group. And, by the end the latest seasonal show titled I Love LA, viewers realize that the star carries even more insights regarding the darker side of Gen Z life (As a millennial, Sennott serves as an honorary member to younger audiences, on the cusp with a knack for bridging different age groups).
Influences and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott admits to being enthusiastic, naming the show in addition to Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as influences for the project, which follows the journey of an influencer Tallulah and her friend and aspiring representative Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the most significant presence on creative vision belonged to Entourage, the program about a rising Hollywood star navigating in a gritty Hollywood (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it throughout the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and chose 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 idea for I Love LA came—in part—from her own, initially fractious, transition to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a popular phenomenon for followers. It was an era that included her grasp some big truths, 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…”
Starting Out
Brought up in New England, Sennott started developing and showcasing comedy while pursuing theatre at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
She decided to act independently, performing at amateur nights with her friend and sharing hilarious (and distinctly) unconventional comedy videos on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed a group of women intensely obsessed with having babies; another envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being stuck in a horror film. By chance, she met Emma through the university’s film scene and ultimately starring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a Jewish wake with shades of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her career, she notes, has been peers giving her a shot, rather than traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, adding humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who questioned about Sennott earlier will certainly be kicking themselves currently. As part of she describes as a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she seems to have manifested an ideal role. In 2019 she posted a video named on LA life online, in which she parodied film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s executive producer (with Emma Barrie) of a series about city dwellers balancing the perks of online celebrity (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being labeled as being a intoxicated thief, and possibly becoming a risky persona non grata). It would be tempting to make a series about online fame that was horribly aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at its subjects. I Love LA avoids both, resulting in a representation of affluent twentysomething life that’s frank about the chaos and the shine.
Balanced Perspective
“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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
