The star joins the digital interview and immediately starts an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, sounding truly regretful. Despite being only a couple of minutes delayed, she wants to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Luckily, in this context, this is precisely what one hopes to encounter. Besides, it’s fairly predictable. Anyone who have seen her fearlessly openly gay and unapologetically crass film Bottoms—that she penned with the director and featured in together with collaborator The Bear’s standout—would already know that she has much to share, be it about roles, sex, or the merits of forming a high-school combat group. Furthermore, by the end her recent multi-episode HBO series titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star has additional insights on the struggles of young adulthood (At 30, Sennott serves as an honorary member to younger audiences, straddling eras adept for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show can’t be avoided and the actress is an admirer, citing the show together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as influences for the project, which follows the struggles of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and fledgling agent Sennott’s character. However, the biggest presence on concept was reserved for the popular sitcom, the HBO sitcom about a rising A-list actor succeeding in a corrupt entertainment industry (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott discovered it during lockdown, became “hooked”, and decided to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she notes. The inspiration for I Love LA emerged—in part—from firsthand, originally rocky, transition to LA and from her cosmic event, a much-talked-about phenomenon for followers. It was a phase that included her grasp significant truths, work-wise and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”
Starting Out
Raised in New England, the star began developing and showcasing stand-up while enrolled in acting 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 states. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “None of the university plays cast me either.” And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She took matters into her own hands, appearing at open mics with Ayo and sharing hilarious (and decidedly) unconventional online content online. One, Baby Cult, centered on characters intensely fixated on pregnancy; a different one envisioned being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being trapped in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Seligman through campus film circles and ultimately appearing in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious comedy set at a funeral gathering with shades of the intense thriller. The big theme of her journey, she notes, has been peers giving her a shot, rather than the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she confirms, stating with a laugh: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Those who were skeptical regarding her then will surely be regretting it now. Through she describes as a “wild, full-circle” story, she appears to created an ideal role. In 2019 she posted a clip named “it’s LA” on social media, in which she parodied film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a show about LA residents juggling benefits of online celebrity (such as partying at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being suspected of being a substance-abusing thief, and potentially becoming a risky pariah). It would be easy to make a series about digital influence that was extremely aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at the characters. This show steers clear of each, creating a representation of advantaged young adult existence that’s frank about the mess and the glamour.
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
