The star enters the online meeting and right away begins an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, seeming truly remorseful. Despite being only slightly late, she wants to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Luckily, for a writer, this is precisely what is ideal to experience. Moreover, it’s fairly unsurprising. Anyone who have seen the fearlessly queer and unapologetically crass movie titled Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with Emma Seligman and appeared in with her friend Ayo Edebiri—would understand that she holds plenty to discuss, whether about identity, intimacy, or the pros of creating a youth fight club. And, once you finish her latest eight-part show titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star carries additional insights regarding the challenges of Gen Z life (Now in her thirties, Sennott represents an honorary member to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial skilled for connecting millennials and Gen Z).
Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress readily acknowledges an admirer, citing it in addition to Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Atlanta as guides for her series, which tracks the travails of a social media star Tallulah and close companion who is also new representative Maia. However, the largest presence on concept was reserved for the popular sitcom, the show focusing on an up-and-coming Hollywood star succeeding in a corrupt entertainment industry (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it during the pandemic, became “hooked”, and resolved to create a new version on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she says. The inspiration for the series came—partly—from personal, initially fractious, move to LA and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed occurrence for enthusiasts. It was a time that involved her understand significant life lessons, in her career and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Humble Origins
Growing up in Connecticut, the star started writing and performing comedy while studying acting at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott decided to act independently, performing at open mics with her friend and uploading hilarious (and decidedly) unconventional online content on the internet. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, depicted a group of women fetishistically drawn to pregnancy; a different one envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being caught in a horror film. By chance, she met Emma through the university’s film scene and eventually appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the intense thriller. The central motif of her journey, she explains, has been people her own age offering opportunities, rather than the industry at large. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she repeats, adding humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Career Breakthrough
Those who were skeptical about her earlier will surely be regretting it today. As part of she describes as a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she seems to have manifested an ideal role. A few years back she shared content named “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she mocked movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a show about Angelenos juggling benefits of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being accused of being a drug-addled stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). Some could tempting to produce a show about digital influence that was horribly glamorous—or, worse, one that mocked at the characters. I Love LA steers clear of each, making for a representation of advantaged millennial existence that’s frank about the grot and the glamour.
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 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
