The performer joins the online meeting and right away launches into an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, sounding truly remorseful. Despite being only slightly behind, she wants to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, in this context, that’s precisely what is ideal to encounter. Besides, it’s fairly predictable. Viewers who know her fearlessly openly gay and unapologetically crass movie titled Bottoms—that she penned with Emma Seligman and appeared in with close companion The Bear’s standout—will be aware that she has a lot to share, be it on gender, intimacy, or the pros of starting a teen brawl society. Plus, once you finish her recent multi-episode show I Love LA, it is clear that the star holds further insights about the darker side of young adulthood (At 30, she serves as a bridge to younger audiences, straddling eras with a knack for straddling both generations).
Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and Sennott admits to being an admirer, citing it in addition to the HBO hit, Insecure and Atlanta as guides for her series, which follows the travails of an influencer Tallulah and ally and new representative portrayed by Sennott. Notably, the biggest spot on concept was reserved for the HBO series, the show depicting an up-and-coming A-list actor navigating in a corrupt Hollywood (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it during lockdown, became “captivated”, and chose to add a fresh perspective on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she says. The idea for I Love LA came—to some extent—from her own, originally fractious, transition to LA and from her cosmic event, a much-talked-about occurrence for enthusiasts. It was a phase that saw her grasp some big insights, in her career and individually. “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 was almost like these biblical tests …”
Starting Out
Brought up in New England, Sennott began writing and performing stand-up while enrolled in theatre at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she states. “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. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
She seized control, performing at live shows with Edebiri and sharing hysterical (and decidedly) weird skits on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on characters fetishistically obsessed with having babies; another portrayed working at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being stuck in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and ultimately appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a religious event with hints of Uncut Gems. A recurring idea of her career, she notes, has been people her own age giving her a shot, as opposed to the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she confirms, continuing humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Career Breakthrough
Individuals who questioned about her previously will likely be feeling foolish currently. As part of she describes as a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she appears to achieved her dream vehicle. Previously she posted a clip called on LA life online, in which she mocked movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about city dwellers balancing the perks of online celebrity (such as socializing at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled thief, and potentially becoming a risky outcast). Some could easy to produce a program about internet celebrity that was horribly aspirational—or, more problematic, one that belittled at the characters. The series does neither, creating a representation of privileged millennial living that’s honest 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
