🔗 Share this article

The star enters the video call and at once starts an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, sounding genuinely remorseful. Despite being only slightly behind, she feels compelled to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, for a writer, that’s precisely what is ideal to encounter. Moreover, it’s pretty predictable. Anyone who have seen the fearlessly queer and brash project Bottoms—that she penned with the director and starred in together with close companion The Bear’s standout—will be aware that she has much to say, be it on identity, sex, or the pros of starting a teen fight club. Plus, once you finish her latest eight-part program I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star has additional perspectives on the darker side of modern youth (At 30, she is a relatable figure of the gang, straddling eras adept for straddling millennials and Gen Z).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show naturally arise and the actress readily acknowledges enthusiastic, naming the show together with the classic series, the acclaimed comedy and Atlanta as inspirations for her series, which tracks the travails of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion who is also aspiring agent Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the biggest influence on the moodboard belonged to the HBO series, the HBO sitcom focusing on an up-and-coming A-list actor navigating in a gritty entertainment industry (memorable line: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She started watching it throughout lockdown, became “captivated”, and chose to create a new version on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.

“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she says. The concept for the series originated—in part—from personal, at first fractious, relocation to LA and from the cosmic event, a frequently discussed phenomenon for enthusiasts. That period marked a time that involved her understand significant life lessons, professionally and individually. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “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…”

Starting Out

Growing up in the East Coast, Sennott started creating and acting comedy 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. “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. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”

She seized control, appearing at open mics with Edebiri and posting uproarious (and decidedly) bizarre skits online. One, Baby Cult, followed characters intensely fixated on pregnancy; a different one envisioned working at the brand Hollister as similar to being caught in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she met Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a funeral gathering with echoes of the intense thriller. The central motif of her journey, she notes, has been peers offering opportunities, rather than established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, adding with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Rising Success

Individuals who had doubts about Sennott earlier will surely be regretting it now. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” story, she seems to have achieved the perfect project. Previously she uploaded a clip named “it’s LA” on social media, in which she parodied film promos (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Years later, she’s executive producer (with Emma Barrie) of a series about Angelenos managing benefits of digital stardom (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being accused of being a substance-abusing stealer, and possibly becoming a unreliable pariah). Some could simple to produce a program about digital influence that was overly glamorous—or, more problematic, one that mocked at the characters. I Love LA steers clear of each, making for a depiction of privileged millennial living that’s honest about the mess and the appeal.

Empathetic Approach

“There have been a lot of shows that depict young people and their relationship to the internet in this very condescending, hateful way,” she comments. “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