The star appears on the digital interview and at once starts an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, sounding truly apologetic. Despite being only a couple of minutes behind, she needs to clarify. “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!” Fortunately, in this context, that’s precisely what is ideal to encounter. Moreover, it’s quite unsurprising. Those familiar with the boldly queer and brash project Bottoms—which she penned with Emma Seligman and starred in alongside close companion Ayo Edebiri—would already know that she holds a lot to share, whether about roles, sex, or the appeal of forming a high-school brawl society. Plus, once you finish her recent multi-episode show titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she carries even more insights about the challenges of Gen Z life (Now in her thirties, Sennott represents a bridge to younger audiences, on the cusp with a knack for straddling both generations).
Influences and Creative Vision
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show naturally arise and Sennott readily acknowledges a fan, referencing it together with the classic series, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as guides for the project, which tracks the struggles of a social media star Tallulah and her friend and aspiring talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the largest presence on concept belonged to the popular sitcom, the HBO sitcom focusing on an emerging Hollywood star navigating in an often-seedy LA scene (notable statement: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and decided to create a new version 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 came—in part—from her own, originally fractious, transition to Los Angeles and from the astrological phase, a popular occurrence for followers. It was a phase that included her understand major life lessons, work-wise and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she says. “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
Growing up in Connecticut, the star commenced writing and performing humor while pursuing acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “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. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She decided to act independently, taking the stage at live shows with her friend and uploading hilarious (and distinctly) weird skits on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted several females intensely fixated on having babies; another portrayed working at the brand Hollister as akin to being trapped in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Emma through the university’s film scene and ended up starring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a religious event with echoes of Uncut Gems. A recurring idea of her journey, she notes, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, rather than the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “They were not involved”, she repeats, adding with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Career Breakthrough
Anyone who questioned about Sennott previously will surely be feeling foolish today. As part of she calls a “incredibly circular” development, she appears to achieved the perfect project. In 2019 she shared a clip titled about Los Angeles on social media, in which she lampooned Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s executive producer (with Emma Barrie) of a series about Angelenos juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being accused of being a drug-addled thief, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). Some could simple to make a show about internet celebrity that was extremely glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at its subjects. The series does neither, creating a representation of privileged millennial existence that’s frank about the mess and the glamour.
Balanced Perspective
“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
