🔗 Share this article

The star enters the video call and immediately starts an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, sounding really remorseful. Although she's only slightly behind, she feels compelled to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, for a writer, that’s just what you want to encounter. Besides, it’s quite predictable. Anyone who have seen her boldly queer and outspoken project titled Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with Emma Seligman and featured in with her friend Ayo Edebiri—will understand that Sennott holds much to share, whether about identity, sex, or the merits of forming a teen combat group. Plus, by the end her new eight-part show I Love LA, it is clear that the star has further insights on the struggles of Gen Z life (As a millennial, Sennott serves as an honorary member to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial with a knack for straddling different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show can’t be avoided and the actress admits to being enthusiastic, naming it alongside Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as influences for the project, which details the travails of online personality Tallulah and her friend who is also fledgling representative portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the most significant presence on creative vision belonged to the HBO series, the HBO sitcom depicting a rising celebrity making his way in a corrupt entertainment industry (memorable line: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott began viewing it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and resolved to put her own twist 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 says. The idea for the series emerged—partly—from personal, initially rocky, transition to LA and from the astrological phase, a popular occurrence for followers. It was a time that included her understand some big insights, in her career and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”

Starting Out

Raised in New England, Sennott commenced writing and performing humor while studying acting at NYU’s Tisch. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she says. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”

Sennott seized control, appearing at amateur nights with Edebiri and sharing hysterical (and very) weird skits digitally. One, Baby Cult, depicted several females intensely obsessed with motherhood; a different one imagined being employed at the brand Hollister as like being caught in a thriller. Interestingly, she connected with Emma through the university’s film scene and eventually appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a funeral gathering with shades of the intense thriller. The big theme of her path, she says, has been people her own age giving her a shot, rather than the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she confirms, continuing with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”

Rising Success

Individuals who questioned about Sennott previously will certainly be kicking themselves now. In what she labels a “incredibly circular” story, she seems to have created her dream vehicle. In 2019 she posted a clip titled on LA life on the internet, in which she mocked movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a show about Angelenos balancing benefits of internet fame (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being accused of being a substance-abusing thief, and potentially becoming a risky persona non grata). It would be easy to make a program about digital influence that was extremely glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that mocked at those depicted. I Love LA steers clear of each, creating a portrait of advantaged twentysomething life that’s honest about the grot 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