The star joins the online meeting and right away begins an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, seeming genuinely regretful. Despite being only a couple of minutes delayed, she needs to justify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Thankfully, in this context, that’s just what you want to encounter. Besides, it’s fairly predictable. Anyone who have seen the unapologetically LGBTQ+ and unapologetically crass movie Bottoms—that she co-wrote with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside her friend the talented actress—can understand that Sennott has much to discuss, ranging from about identity, intimacy, or the appeal of creating a high-school brawl society. Furthermore, by the end her latest seasonal program titled I Love LA, it is clear that she carries additional insights on the challenges of young adulthood (As a millennial, she is a bridge to younger audiences, on the cusp with a knack for connecting different age groups).
Influences and Creative Vision
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and the actress admits to being an admirer, citing the show together with the HBO hit, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as guides for I Love LA, which details the journey of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also new representative portrayed by Sennott. However, the largest presence on the moodboard went to the HBO series, that HBO sitcom focusing on a rising celebrity making his way in a gritty LA scene (notable statement: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She began viewing it throughout COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and decided to create a new version on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she says. The idea for the series came—partly—from personal, at first fractious, move to Tinseltown and from the cosmic event, a popular phenomenon for followers. This represented an era that involved her learn some big insights, work-wise and individually. “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. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Early Beginnings
Raised in the East Coast, the star began developing and showcasing humor while enrolled in performance at a prestigious arts school. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she explains. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at live shows with her friend and posting hysterical (and decidedly) unconventional skits digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, followed characters fetishistically obsessed with motherhood; another imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being trapped in a horror film. Interestingly, she met Emma through campus film circles and ultimately starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a religious event with shades of the intense thriller. The central motif of her journey, she says, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, instead of established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, adding with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who questioned about Sennott earlier will likely be regretting it now. In what she describes as a “wild, full-circle” story, she has achieved the perfect project. A few years back she shared content titled on LA life online, in which she mocked movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a series about Angelenos managing advantages of internet fame (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with downsides (your client being suspected of being a substance-abusing stealer, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). Some could simple to create a show about online fame that was horribly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that mocked at those depicted. This show does neither, resulting in a depiction of advantaged twentysomething living that’s frank about the mess and the appeal.
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 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
