The star enters the video call and at once launches into an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, appearing really remorseful. Despite being only a couple of minutes delayed, she feels compelled to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, during an interview, this is precisely what is ideal to hear. Additionally, it’s fairly unsurprising. Those familiar with the boldly openly gay and unapologetically crass movie titled Bottoms—which she penned with her creative partner and appeared in together with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—will be aware that she has much to say, be it about gender, relationships, or the merits of forming a youth brawl society. Furthermore, once you finish her latest eight-part show I Love LA, viewers realize that the star carries additional insights about the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, she serves as a bridge of the gang, straddling eras adept for bridging different age groups).
Influences and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott admits to being enthusiastic, referencing it alongside the classic series, the acclaimed comedy and the innovative program as inspirations for her series, which tracks the struggles of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and new talent manager Maia. Perhaps, the most significant influence on creative vision was reserved for the HBO series, that program about a rising celebrity navigating in a corrupt entertainment industry (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She began viewing it amid COVID-19, became “captivated”, and decided 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 says. The concept for the series came—in part—from personal, initially rocky, transition to Los Angeles and from the astrological phase, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. It was a phase that included her grasp major truths, professionally and individually. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Early Beginnings
Brought up in New England, the star started creating and acting humor while pursuing theatre at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
Sennott seized control, taking the stage at amateur nights with Edebiri and sharing hilarious (and very) bizarre comedy videos digitally. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on characters obsessively obsessed with having babies; a different one portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as akin to being trapped in a thriller. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through the university’s film scene and ended up featuring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her journey, she says, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, continuing with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who were skeptical regarding Sennott then will surely be kicking themselves today. Through she describes as a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she seems to have achieved an ideal role. In 2019 she uploaded a clip titled “it’s LA” online, in which she lampooned film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a show about city dwellers juggling advantages of online celebrity (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with drawbacks (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled criminal, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). It would be simple to create a show about digital influence that was overly glamorous—or, more problematic, one that belittled at those depicted. This show steers clear of each, resulting in a portrait of privileged twentysomething life that’s frank about the chaos and the shine.
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 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
