The star appears on the digital interview and immediately launches into an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, sounding truly apologetic. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she wants to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, during an interview, that’s just what one hopes to hear. Besides, it’s pretty expected. Viewers familiar with her fearlessly openly gay and unapologetically crass project Bottoms—that she collaborated on with Emma Seligman and featured in with collaborator the talented actress—can be aware that Sennott possesses plenty to discuss, ranging from on gender, intimacy, or the appeal of creating a youth brawl society. Plus, by the end her new multi-episode HBO series I Love LA, viewers realize that the star holds even more insights on the challenges of Gen Z life (At 30, she serves as an honorary member for this generation, on the cusp adept for bridging millennials and Gen Z).
Influences and Storytelling Approach
The comparisons to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott admits to being enthusiastic, naming the show in addition to Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and the innovative program as inspirations for the project, which tracks the journey of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also new representative portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the most significant influence on creative vision went to Entourage, that program about an up-and-coming Hollywood star navigating in a gritty Hollywood (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott discovered it during COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective 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 idea for I Love LA emerged—to some extent—from firsthand, initially difficult, transition to LA and from her saturn return, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. It was an era that involved her grasp some big life lessons, work-wise and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “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…”
Starting Out
Brought up in the East Coast, Sennott commenced creating and acting stand-up while enrolled in performance at NYU’s Tisch. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she states. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She seized control, appearing at amateur nights with Ayo and posting hysterical (and decidedly) bizarre skits on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on characters obsessively drawn to having babies; a different one portrayed being employed at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being trapped in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a religious event with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her journey, she says, has been people her own age supporting her, instead of traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, stating humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Rising Success
Individuals who had doubts about Sennott previously will likely be kicking themselves today. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she appears to achieved her dream vehicle. In 2019 she posted a video called on LA life online, in which she mocked film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about LA residents managing benefits of digital stardom (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your friend being suspected of being a intoxicated criminal, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). It would be easy to make a series about internet celebrity that was horribly aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at its subjects. I Love LA does neither, creating a depiction of privileged millennial existence that’s candid about the chaos and the shine.
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 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
