The star joins the online meeting and right away starts an apology. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, appearing truly remorseful. Despite being only a bit delayed, she wants to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, in this context, this is just what one hopes to encounter. Moreover, it’s quite expected. Anyone who have seen her unapologetically openly gay and brash project Bottoms—which she collaborated on with the director and appeared in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—would be aware that Sennott has much to share, whether on roles, intimacy, or the merits of creating a teen brawl society. Plus, after watching her recent eight-part HBO series titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star carries additional insights on the challenges of young adulthood (As a millennial, Sennott is an honorary member to younger audiences, on the cusp adept for bridging millennials and Gen Z).
Inspirations and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and the actress readily acknowledges an admirer, naming it together with the HBO hit, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for I Love LA, which details the journey of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also fledgling talent manager portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the largest presence on creative vision went to the HBO series, that HBO sitcom focusing on an up-and-coming celebrity navigating in an often-seedy entertainment industry (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it throughout lockdown, became “captivated”, and decided to add a fresh perspective on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The idea for this project emerged—to some extent—from her own, at first fractious, transition to Tinseltown and from the saturn return, a much-talked-about event for enthusiasts. It was a time that saw her grasp some big truths, work-wise and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Starting Out
Raised in New England, the star began writing and performing stand-up while studying acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she states. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
She took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at live shows with her friend and sharing hilarious (and decidedly) unconventional skits on the internet. One, Baby Cult, followed a group of women obsessively obsessed with pregnancy; a different one imagined being employed at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being trapped in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Seligman through NYU’s movie community and eventually starring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a Jewish wake with hints of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her path, she explains, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, as opposed to the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she confirms, continuing humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Rising Success
Anyone who had doubts regarding her previously will likely be regretting it today. Through she describes as a “astonishingly complete” story, she seems to have manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she posted content called “it’s LA” online, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a series about LA residents juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your friend being labeled as being a intoxicated thief, and possibly becoming a risky outcast). It would be simple to create a series about digital influence that was extremely glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that mocked at its subjects. This show does neither, making for a portrait of affluent young adult life that’s frank about the grot and the appeal.
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 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
