The star joins the video call and at once launches into an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, appearing really regretful. Despite being only a bit late, she needs 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 you want to encounter. Additionally, it’s pretty expected. Anyone familiar with her unapologetically openly gay and brash film titled Bottoms—which Sennott co-wrote with the director and appeared in together with her friend The Bear’s standout—would already know that Sennott has a lot to discuss, be it on gender, relationships, or the pros of creating a youth combat group. And, by the end the recent multi-episode HBO series I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star carries further insights about the darker side of modern youth (As a millennial, Sennott represents an honorary member of the gang, a tale-end millennial adept for connecting different age groups).
Inspirations and Artistic Direction
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and the actress is an admirer, naming it together with Sex and the City, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as influences for I Love LA, which follows the journey of online personality Tallulah and her friend who is also fledgling representative Sennott’s character. Notably, the largest spot on the moodboard belonged to the HBO series, that show focusing on an emerging Hollywood star making his way in a corrupt entertainment industry (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it amid the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and resolved 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 notes. The idea for I Love LA originated—in part—from personal, at first difficult, move to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed event for astrology heads. It was a phase that saw her grasp significant truths, professionally and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Humble Origins
Raised in Connecticut, Sennott commenced developing and showcasing stand-up while pursuing performance at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She seized control, taking the stage at amateur nights with Ayo and uploading hilarious (and decidedly) unconventional comedy videos digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, followed characters fetishistically drawn to having babies; another envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as like being trapped in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and eventually starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a religious event with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her journey, she explains, has been people her own age offering opportunities, rather than traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, stating humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who were skeptical about her previously will likely be kicking themselves today. Through she describes as a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she appears to achieved an ideal role. A few years back she shared content called about Los Angeles on the internet, in which she parodied movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Now, she’s executive producer (with the co-writer) of a show about city dwellers balancing the perks of internet fame (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with drawbacks (your associate being labeled as being a drug-addled stealer, and potentially becoming a unreliable outcast). It would be tempting to produce a program about online fame that was overly idealized—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at those depicted. I Love LA steers clear of each, making for a representation of affluent millennial existence that’s candid about the mess and the glamour.
Empathetic Approach
“Many programs portray youth and online life with disdain and mockery,” 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
