The star enters the digital interview and right away starts an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, appearing really regretful. She is only slightly behind, she feels compelled to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, for a writer, that’s precisely what one hopes to experience. Besides, it’s fairly unsurprising. Anyone familiar with her boldly openly gay and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—which Sennott co-wrote with the director and featured in together with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—will already know that Sennott holds much to say, ranging from on gender, relationships, or the merits of creating a high-school fight club. Furthermore, after watching the recent eight-part program titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star carries additional thoughts regarding the darker side of Gen Z life (Now in her thirties, she serves as a bridge for this generation, a tale-end millennial adept for connecting both generations).
Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction
Likenesses to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott is a fan, referencing the show in addition to the HBO hit, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for her series, which details the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also new talent manager Maia. Perhaps, the largest presence on the moodboard belonged to the HBO series, that program focusing on an up-and-coming Hollywood star succeeding in a gritty LA scene (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott discovered 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 explains. The inspiration for I Love LA came—partly—from personal, at first fractious, transition to Los Angeles and from her cosmic event, a popular phenomenon for astrology heads. That period marked a phase that involved her understand some big life lessons, work-wise and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Early Beginnings
Brought up in New England, Sennott began creating and acting stand-up while studying acting at NYU’s Tisch. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she states. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “None of the university plays cast me either.” And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She decided to act independently, performing at live shows with Ayo and uploading hysterical (and distinctly) weird skits on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted characters intensely drawn to having babies; another portrayed being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being caught in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually starring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a Jewish wake with shades of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her journey, she notes, has been contemporaries supporting her, as opposed to the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, continuing with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Rising Success
Those who questioned regarding her earlier will surely be kicking themselves now. Through she labels a “astonishingly complete” development, she seems to have achieved the perfect project. Previously she shared a clip titled about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos managing the perks of internet fame (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being suspected of being a drug-addled stealer, and possibly becoming a unreliable outcast). Some could easy to create a show about internet celebrity that was extremely idealized—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at those depicted. I Love LA does neither, making for a depiction of affluent young adult life that’s honest about the chaos and the appeal.
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
