The performer joins the digital interview and right away starts an apology. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, sounding genuinely remorseful. Despite being only slightly delayed, she feels compelled to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Fortunately, during an interview, that’s just what is ideal to experience. Moreover, it’s quite predictable. Viewers who know the fearlessly openly gay and brash project Bottoms—which Sennott penned with Emma Seligman and starred in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—will already know that she has much to say, whether on roles, sex, or the merits of creating a teen combat group. Plus, by the end her new eight-part program titled I Love LA, viewers realize that the star carries even more thoughts about the challenges of modern youth (As a millennial, Sennott is an honorary member to younger audiences, straddling eras adept for straddling both generations).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott is a fan, citing it together with the classic series, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for the project, which follows the journey of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and fledgling agent portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the biggest presence on concept was reserved for the popular sitcom, that HBO sitcom about an up-and-coming celebrity navigating in a gritty LA scene (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott began viewing it throughout lockdown, became “obsessed”, and decided to create a new version on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she explains. The idea for the series emerged—to some extent—from firsthand, originally rocky, move to Tinseltown and from the saturn return, a much-talked-about phenomenon for followers. That period marked a phase that included her learn some big life lessons, in her career and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Starting Out
Brought up in New England, Sennott started developing and showcasing stand-up while studying theatre at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” 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.”
She took matters into her own hands, appearing at amateur nights with her friend and uploading uproarious (and very) weird skits digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on characters fetishistically fixated on pregnancy; another portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as similar to being stuck in a horror film. Interestingly, she connected with Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ended up appearing in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful comedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of Uncut Gems. The central motif of her path, she notes, has been peers supporting her, rather than traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “They were not involved”, she repeats, stating amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Those who questioned about Sennott then will certainly be regretting it currently. As part of she labels a “astonishingly complete” turn of events, she seems to have manifested an ideal role. Previously she posted a video called “it’s LA” on social media, in which she mocked film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a series about city dwellers juggling the perks of digital stardom (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being accused of being a drug-addled stealer, and possibly becoming a unreliable persona non grata). It would be easy to create a series about internet celebrity that was overly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that punched down at those depicted. I Love LA avoids both, resulting in a representation of privileged young adult life that’s candid about the grot and the appeal.
Balanced Perspective
“Many programs portray youth and online life with disdain and mockery,” 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
