The performer enters the online meeting and at once starts an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she states, seeming genuinely regretful. Despite being only slightly delayed, she feels compelled to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, for a writer, that’s just what one hopes to experience. Besides, it’s fairly expected. Viewers who know her unapologetically queer and unapologetically crass film Bottoms—which she co-wrote with Emma Seligman and starred in with her friend the talented actress—would understand that Sennott has much to discuss, whether on identity, relationships, or the pros of creating a youth combat group. Furthermore, by the end her recent multi-episode HBO series I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star carries further thoughts on the struggles of modern youth (As a millennial, Sennott is a relatable figure of the gang, straddling eras skilled for bridging different age groups).
Influences and Storytelling Approach
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and the actress is a fan, citing the show together with Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also new talent manager Maia. However, the most significant influence on the moodboard belonged to Entourage, that HBO sitcom focusing on an up-and-coming celebrity making his way in an often-seedy LA scene (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott began viewing it amid COVID-19, became “captivated”, and decided to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she notes. The inspiration for the series came—in part—from her own, at first difficult, relocation to LA and from the astrological phase, a much-talked-about phenomenon for enthusiasts. It was a time that saw her learn major insights, professionally and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Humble Origins
Brought up in Connecticut, the star started writing and performing stand-up while pursuing theatre at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “None of the university plays cast me either.” And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She decided to act independently, taking the stage at amateur nights with her friend and uploading hilarious (and decidedly) weird skits digitally. One, Baby Cult, centered on a group of women obsessively drawn to pregnancy; another imagined working at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being trapped in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Seligman through NYU’s movie community and eventually appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a religious event with hints of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her career, she explains, has been people her own age supporting her, instead of traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, stating with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Career Breakthrough
Individuals who questioned regarding her earlier will likely be kicking themselves now. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she appears to achieved the perfect project. A few years back she uploaded content named on LA life on social media, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a series about LA residents balancing advantages of digital stardom (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being labeled as being a substance-abusing stealer, and perhaps becoming a risky pariah). One might easy to make a program about digital influence that was overly aspirational—or, worse, one that mocked at those depicted. The series does neither, making for a representation of affluent twentysomething life that’s candid about the mess and the glamour.
Nuanced Portrayal
“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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
