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The star joins the video call and at once starts an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, sounding genuinely regretful. She is only slightly late, she feels compelled to clarify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, in this context, this is just what is ideal to encounter. Moreover, it’s quite unsurprising. Those who have seen the fearlessly openly gay and unapologetically crass movie titled Bottoms—that she penned with Emma Seligman and featured in with close companion the talented actress—can understand that she has a lot to say, ranging from on roles, intimacy, or the merits of forming a youth brawl society. Furthermore, by the end her latest eight-part program titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she carries additional perspectives regarding the struggles of Gen Z life (At 30, Sennott is a bridge to younger audiences, straddling eras with a knack for bridging different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

Likenesses to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and the actress is an admirer, naming the show alongside the HBO hit, the acclaimed comedy and Donald Glover’s series as influences for her series, which tracks the travails of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion who is also aspiring representative Sennott’s character. However, the largest influence on creative vision belonged to the popular sitcom, that program focusing on a rising Hollywood star succeeding in a gritty LA scene (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott discovered it throughout the pandemic, became “obsessed”, and decided to add a fresh perspective on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.

“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she notes. The concept for I Love LA came—partly—from firsthand, at first rocky, move to Los Angeles and from the astrological phase, a frequently discussed phenomenon for followers. This represented a time that saw her learn major insights, in her career and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” 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 resembled a series of extreme challenges…”

Starting Out

Growing up in Connecticut, Sennott began creating and acting comedy while studying performance at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

Sennott took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at amateur nights with her friend and sharing hysterical (and very) bizarre online content digitally. One, Baby Cult, centered on a group of women obsessively fixated on having babies; another envisioned working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being caught in a scary movie. By chance, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and eventually starring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a religious event with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her career, she says, has been people her own age giving her a shot, instead of the industry at large. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, continuing humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Rising Success

Anyone who were skeptical about Sennott previously will likely be kicking themselves today. As part of she calls a “astonishingly complete” story, she appears to created an ideal role. In 2019 she uploaded a video called on LA life online, in which she parodied film promos (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos managing advantages of internet fame (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled stealer, and perhaps becoming a unreliable pariah). One might tempting to produce a program about online fame that was extremely glamorous—or, more problematic, one that belittled at the characters. This show avoids both, making for a portrait of advantaged twentysomething life that’s honest about the grot 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 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