The star enters the video call and immediately begins an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, appearing really remorseful. Although she's only slightly delayed, she feels compelled to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, during an interview, that’s just what you want to hear. Additionally, it’s pretty predictable. Viewers who know her unapologetically openly gay and unapologetically crass project titled Bottoms—which Sennott collaborated on with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—will be aware that Sennott has much to discuss, be it on roles, relationships, or the merits of forming a high-school combat group. Plus, by the end her latest seasonal show titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she carries further thoughts about the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott represents an honorary member for this generation, on the cusp skilled for bridging millennials and Gen Z).
Influences and Storytelling Approach
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and Sennott is a fan, naming it alongside the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as guides for her series, which tracks the struggles of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also new representative Maia. Perhaps, the most significant influence on creative vision went to the popular sitcom, the program focusing on an up-and-coming Hollywood star navigating in a gritty Hollywood (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She began viewing it amid lockdown, became “captivated”, and decided 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 explains. The idea for this project came—partly—from personal, originally fractious, relocation to Los Angeles and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed occurrence for enthusiasts. This represented a time that saw her understand significant truths, work-wise and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “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
Growing up in the East Coast, Sennott started developing and showcasing humor while studying performance at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, performing at live shows with Edebiri and sharing hilarious (and distinctly) bizarre skits on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically drawn to pregnancy; a different one imagined being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being stuck in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Emma through the university’s film scene and ultimately starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a Jewish wake with shades of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her path, she says, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, as opposed to traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, adding humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Those who were skeptical about Sennott then will likely be regretting it now. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” story, she appears to manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she uploaded a video called “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she mocked movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a show about LA residents balancing benefits of online celebrity (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with drawbacks (your client being accused of being a drug-addled stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). Some could easy to make a show about digital influence that was overly idealized—or, more problematic, one that mocked at its subjects. The series avoids both, creating a representation of privileged young adult existence that’s frank about the grot 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 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
