The performer enters the video call and at once begins an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, sounding really apologetic. Despite being only a bit delayed, she feels compelled to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, for a writer, this is exactly what one hopes to experience. Moreover, it’s pretty predictable. Viewers who know her fearlessly openly gay and brash film Bottoms—which Sennott collaborated on with the director and appeared in alongside collaborator Ayo Edebiri—will be aware that Sennott holds plenty to discuss, whether on identity, relationships, or the pros of starting a high-school brawl society. And, after watching the recent multi-episode HBO series I Love LA, it is clear that she carries further insights regarding the challenges of modern youth (At 30, she serves as a relatable figure for this generation, on the cusp adept for straddling different age groups).
Influences and Artistic Direction
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott admits to being enthusiastic, citing the show alongside the HBO hit, Insecure and the innovative program as inspirations for I Love LA, which details the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and ally and new representative Maia. However, the biggest spot on creative vision went to the HBO series, that HBO sitcom focusing on a rising A-list actor succeeding in a gritty Hollywood (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott started watching it amid the pandemic, became “captivated”, and chose to create a new version on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she notes. The inspiration for I Love LA originated—to some extent—from firsthand, initially rocky, relocation to Los Angeles and from the saturn return, a much-talked-about phenomenon for enthusiasts. This represented a phase that involved her understand major truths, professionally and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Starting Out
Growing up in New England, Sennott began creating and acting comedy while pursuing performance at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “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, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and posting hilarious (and decidedly) weird skits digitally. One, Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically fixated on having babies; another portrayed working at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being trapped in a thriller. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ended up featuring in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a Jewish wake with shades of the intense thriller. The big theme of her journey, she says, has been peers giving her a shot, as opposed to established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, continuing humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Rising Success
Anyone who questioned about Sennott earlier will surely be feeling foolish today. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she appears to manifested the perfect project. Previously she uploaded a video called on LA life on the internet, in which she parodied movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a show about Angelenos managing advantages of internet fame (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being accused of being a intoxicated thief, and perhaps becoming a risky persona non grata). One might simple to create a show about online fame that was overly idealized—or, worse, one that mocked at the characters. The series avoids both, creating a representation of privileged twentysomething existence that’s frank about the chaos and the glamour.
Nuanced Portrayal
“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” she says. “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
