The performer joins the online meeting and right away starts an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, appearing genuinely remorseful. Despite being only slightly behind, she wants to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Thankfully, during an interview, that’s just what is ideal to experience. Besides, it’s quite predictable. Viewers familiar with the fearlessly openly gay and unapologetically crass film Bottoms—which Sennott penned with her creative partner and starred in together with collaborator The Bear’s standout—will be aware that Sennott possesses much to discuss, whether on identity, sex, or the merits of forming a high-school brawl society. Plus, by the end the recent eight-part show titled I Love LA, it is clear that she carries further perspectives on the challenges of modern youth (At 30, she is an honorary member of the gang, a tale-end millennial adept for straddling different age groups).
Influences and Creative Vision
Likenesses to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and the actress readily acknowledges a fan, naming the show alongside the classic series, the acclaimed comedy and Atlanta as inspirations for the project, which tracks the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and new representative Sennott’s character. However, the biggest spot on concept belonged to the popular sitcom, the HBO sitcom focusing on an emerging Hollywood star navigating in a gritty Hollywood (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it during lockdown, became “obsessed”, and resolved to put her own twist 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 concept for the series originated—partly—from her own, at first difficult, relocation to Los Angeles and from her astrological phase, a popular event for followers. This represented a phase that saw her grasp some big insights, in her career and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” 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…”
Humble Origins
Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott started developing and showcasing humor while pursuing performance at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “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. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, appearing at live shows with Edebiri and sharing uproarious (and distinctly) weird comedy videos digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically fixated on having babies; another imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being trapped in a scary movie. Interestingly, she connected with Seligman through the university’s film scene and ultimately appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of Uncut Gems. A recurring idea of her journey, she says, has been people her own age offering opportunities, rather than the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, continuing with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Rising Success
Anyone who questioned about Sennott then will certainly be feeling foolish today. In what she calls a “wild, full-circle” development, she appears to manifested an ideal role. A few years back she shared a video called about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she parodied movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a series about LA residents balancing benefits of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being suspected of being a drug-addled criminal, and possibly becoming a unreliable pariah). One might easy to make a series about online fame that was extremely glamorous—or, worse, one that punched down at the characters. The series avoids both, resulting in a depiction of privileged millennial existence that’s honest about the mess and the glamour.
Empathetic Approach
“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
