The star appears on the video call and right away starts an apology. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, sounding really apologetic. Despite being only a bit delayed, she needs to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, in this context, this is exactly what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s quite expected. Anyone familiar with her fearlessly openly gay and unapologetically crass movie Bottoms—which she collaborated on with the director and appeared in alongside close companion the talented actress—will understand that Sennott holds much to say, whether about gender, intimacy, or the appeal of forming a teen brawl society. And, by the end the new eight-part show I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she holds additional perspectives about the challenges of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, she is a relatable figure to younger audiences, on the cusp adept for connecting millennials and Gen Z).
Influences and Creative Vision
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show naturally arise and Sennott is a fan, citing the show together with Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for the project, which details the travails of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also new agent Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the biggest influence on the moodboard was reserved for the HBO series, the show focusing on a rising A-list actor succeeding in an often-seedy entertainment industry (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it amid lockdown, became “captivated”, and decided to add a fresh perspective on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she explains. The idea for this project originated—partly—from personal, at first fractious, relocation to Tinseltown and from the saturn return, a popular occurrence for followers. This represented a phase that included her learn some big truths, work-wise and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Starting Out
Brought up in the East Coast, Sennott started developing and showcasing humor while enrolled in performance at a prestigious arts school. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “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. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott decided to act independently, performing at open mics with Ayo and sharing hilarious (and decidedly) unconventional skits online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females obsessively obsessed with motherhood; another portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as akin to being trapped in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through the university’s film scene and eventually starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a Jewish wake with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her career, she explains, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she confirms, stating amusedly: “They don’t want us to win.”
Career Breakthrough
Anyone who had doubts about Sennott then will likely be regretting it currently. In what she labels a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she has achieved her dream vehicle. In 2019 she shared a video named about Los Angeles on social media, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s executive producer (with her partner) of a show about Angelenos managing advantages of internet fame (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being labeled as being a intoxicated stealer, and perhaps becoming a unreliable pariah). Some could easy to make a program about internet celebrity that was horribly aspirational—or, worse, one that punched down at those depicted. This show steers clear of each, resulting in a depiction of privileged twentysomething existence that’s honest 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 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
