The performer enters the video call and at once begins an apology. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, seeming really apologetic. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she needs to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, for a writer, that’s just what one hopes to hear. Moreover, it’s quite predictable. Anyone who have seen the unapologetically openly gay and unapologetically crass project Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with Emma Seligman and starred in together with close companion Ayo Edebiri—will be aware that she possesses much to say, whether about roles, relationships, or the appeal of creating a high-school fight club. And, after watching the latest multi-episode program I Love LA, it is clear that she carries additional perspectives on the darker side of modern youth (Now in her thirties, Sennott represents a bridge of the gang, a tale-end millennial skilled for connecting both generations).
Inspirations and Storytelling Approach
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, citing it alongside Sex and the City, Insecure and Atlanta as influences for I Love LA, which details the struggles of an influencer Tallulah and close companion and aspiring representative portrayed by Sennott. Notably, the biggest presence on the moodboard went to the HBO series, that HBO sitcom focusing on an emerging A-list actor succeeding in a gritty entertainment industry (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott began viewing it during COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and chose to put her own twist on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she notes. The inspiration for the series came—in part—from personal, initially fractious, transition to Tinseltown and from her cosmic event, a frequently discussed event for astrology heads. This represented a time that involved her learn some big life lessons, work-wise and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Early Beginnings
Brought up in the East Coast, the star began writing and performing humor while enrolled in theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
Sennott decided to act independently, performing at live shows with Edebiri and uploading hilarious (and decidedly) unconventional online content online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, depicted characters fetishistically obsessed with pregnancy; another imagined being employed at the brand Hollister as akin to being stuck in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Seligman through campus film circles and ended up appearing in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a funeral gathering with hints of the intense thriller. The central motif of her path, she says, has been peers giving her a shot, as opposed to established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, continuing humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who had doubts about her then will certainly be feeling foolish now. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she seems to have created the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded a clip called about Los Angeles on social media, in which she lampooned movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about city dwellers managing benefits of digital stardom (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being labeled as being a intoxicated thief, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). It would be simple to produce a show about digital influence that was horribly glamorous—or, more problematic, one that mocked at the characters. The series steers clear of each, resulting in a depiction of advantaged millennial life that’s frank about the mess and the appeal.
Empathetic Approach
“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
