The star enters the video call and immediately starts an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, appearing genuinely remorseful. Despite being only a couple of minutes late, she feels compelled to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, in this context, this is precisely what one hopes to hear. Additionally, it’s pretty unsurprising. Viewers who know the boldly queer and outspoken movie Bottoms—that Sennott collaborated on with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—would be aware that she holds plenty to discuss, ranging from on identity, intimacy, or the pros of starting a high-school combat group. Plus, once you finish her new eight-part HBO series I Love LA, viewers realize that she carries further perspectives on the darker side of Gen Z life (Now in her thirties, she represents a bridge of the gang, on the cusp skilled for straddling both generations).
Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, referencing it together with the classic series, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the journey of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and new talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the biggest presence on creative vision belonged to Entourage, that show about an up-and-coming A-list actor navigating in a gritty entertainment industry (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it throughout COVID-19, became “hooked”, and chose to add a fresh perspective on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she says. The concept for I Love LA came—to some extent—from firsthand, initially fractious, relocation to LA and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about occurrence for enthusiasts. That period marked an era that included her learn some big life lessons, work-wise and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Starting Out
Raised in Connecticut, Sennott started creating and acting humor while enrolled in acting at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott decided to act independently, performing at open mics with her friend and sharing hysterical (and very) unconventional online content digitally. One, Baby Cult, centered on a group of women obsessively obsessed with pregnancy; another portrayed working at the brand Hollister as like being stuck in a thriller. By chance, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and ended up starring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a Jewish wake with hints of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her career, she explains, has been people her own age supporting her, as opposed to established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, continuing amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who questioned regarding her then will likely be kicking themselves now. In what she describes as a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she has created the perfect project. In 2019 she shared a video named on LA life online, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s executive producer (with Emma Barrie) of a show about Angelenos juggling advantages of digital stardom (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your friend being suspected of being a substance-abusing criminal, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). Some could tempting to make a show about online fame that was extremely idealized—or, worse, one that mocked at the characters. I Love LA avoids both, making for a portrait of affluent twentysomething living that’s honest about the chaos and the shine.
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 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