The performer joins the video call and immediately begins an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, appearing really apologetic. Despite being only a bit delayed, she wants 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 exactly what one hopes to experience. Additionally, it’s quite predictable. Viewers who know her unapologetically queer and outspoken film Bottoms—which Sennott penned with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside close companion The Bear’s standout—can be aware that she holds a lot to discuss, be it about identity, intimacy, or the merits of creating a youth combat group. Plus, by the end the latest multi-episode show I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star holds even more thoughts regarding the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, she represents an honorary member of the gang, straddling eras with a knack for connecting different age groups).
Influences and Creative Vision
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress readily acknowledges enthusiastic, naming it in addition to the HBO hit, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as guides for her series, which tracks the travails of a social media star Tallulah and ally and new agent Maia. However, the most significant spot on concept belonged to Entourage, that HBO sitcom depicting a rising Hollywood star succeeding in an often-seedy Hollywood (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott discovered it throughout the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and resolved to put her own twist on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she says. The inspiration for I Love LA came—partly—from personal, at first rocky, relocation to Los Angeles and from her saturn return, a popular event for astrology heads. That period marked a time that included her understand major life lessons, in her career and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Humble Origins
Growing up in the East Coast, the star started creating and acting humor while enrolled in acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “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?”
She took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at live shows with Edebiri and posting uproarious (and very) weird skits online. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females intensely fixated on motherhood; another envisioned working at the brand Hollister as akin to being stuck in a thriller. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Emma through the university’s film scene and eventually appearing in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a funeral gathering with shades of Uncut Gems. The central motif of her journey, she says, has been peers supporting her, rather than the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “They were not involved”, she confirms, adding amusedly: “They don’t want us to win.”
Rising Success
Anyone who had doubts regarding her earlier will likely be feeling foolish now. In what she describes as a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she has achieved her dream vehicle. Previously she posted a clip titled about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she lampooned Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Now, she’s executive producer (with her partner) of a comedy about Angelenos juggling benefits of online celebrity (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being labeled as being a substance-abusing criminal, and potentially becoming a unreliable outcast). It would be easy to create a program about internet celebrity that was extremely idealized—or, worse, one that belittled at those depicted. I Love LA does neither, creating a depiction of privileged twentysomething life that’s frank about the mess and the glamour.
Balanced Perspective
“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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
