🔗 Share this article

The performer joins the video call and right away launches into an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, appearing genuinely remorseful. She is only a bit delayed, she wants to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, during an interview, that’s exactly what you want to encounter. Additionally, it’s fairly expected. Anyone who know the boldly queer and unapologetically crass movie titled Bottoms—that she penned with her creative partner and featured in together with her friend the talented actress—can be aware that she holds a lot to share, be it on roles, intimacy, or the appeal of forming a teen combat group. Plus, once you finish her latest eight-part program I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star holds further perspectives on the challenges of Gen Z life (As a millennial, Sennott serves as a bridge of the gang, on the cusp adept for straddling different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress is a fan, naming the show together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the struggles of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and ally and fledgling representative portrayed by Sennott. However, the biggest influence on creative vision went to the HBO series, that show focusing on an emerging A-list actor succeeding in a gritty LA scene (notable statement: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She began viewing it amid the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose 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 inspiration for this project emerged—partly—from firsthand, initially rocky, move to Los Angeles and from her cosmic event, a popular occurrence for followers. This represented a phase that involved her learn some big life lessons, work-wise and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she admits. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Humble Origins

Brought up in the East Coast, Sennott started developing and showcasing comedy while enrolled in theatre at NYU’s Tisch. “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. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

Sennott decided to act independently, appearing at live shows with Edebiri and posting hilarious (and distinctly) weird online content digitally. One, Baby Cult, depicted characters fetishistically drawn to pregnancy; a different one portrayed working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being trapped in a thriller. In a neat twist of fate, she met Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually starring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a Jewish wake with hints of the intense thriller. The central motif of her path, she explains, has been people her own age supporting her, rather than the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, adding with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Manifesting Dreams

Anyone who questioned regarding Sennott earlier will likely be regretting it now. In what she labels a “incredibly circular” story, she seems to have created an ideal role. A few years back she shared a video called “it’s LA” on social media, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a comedy about LA residents juggling benefits of internet fame (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your friend being labeled as being a drug-addled stealer, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). One might simple to create a show about online fame that was extremely aspirational—or, worse, one that belittled at its subjects. The series steers clear of each, resulting in a portrait of privileged young adult living that’s frank about the grot and the shine.

Nuanced Portrayal

“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