The actress and writer exploring her side-splitting comedy portraying the grotty allure of today's youth life
The star appears on the online meeting and at once begins an apology. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, sounding really remorseful. Although she's only slightly late, she feels compelled to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Luckily, for a writer, this is precisely what is ideal to experience. Additionally, it’s fairly unsurprising. Anyone who know her boldly LGBTQ+ and brash film titled Bottoms—that she collaborated on with the director and starred in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—will already know that Sennott has a lot to discuss, be it about gender, sex, or the merits of starting a youth fight club. Furthermore, after watching her new eight-part show titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star has further thoughts regarding the challenges of modern youth (Now in her thirties, she serves as a relatable figure to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial adept for straddling different age groups).
Inspirations and Creative Vision
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, citing the show alongside the HBO hit, Insecure and the innovative program as guides for I Love LA, which tracks the struggles of online personality Tallulah and her friend and aspiring representative portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the largest influence on concept was reserved for the HBO series, the HBO sitcom depicting an up-and-coming Hollywood star navigating in a corrupt Hollywood (memorable line: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She started watching it throughout the pandemic, became “hooked”, and decided to add a fresh perspective on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she notes. The concept for the series originated—partly—from her own, at first difficult, transition to Los Angeles and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about phenomenon for enthusiasts. It was an era that included her understand significant insights, in her career and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Humble Origins
Raised in the East Coast, Sennott started developing and showcasing humor while pursuing performance at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “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. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She decided to act independently, performing at amateur nights with Edebiri and uploading hysterical (and decidedly) unconventional skits on the internet. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted characters obsessively fixated on motherhood; a different one portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as similar to being stuck in a horror film. By chance, she connected with Emma through NYU’s movie community and ended up featuring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a funeral gathering with shades of Uncut Gems. A recurring idea of her career, she explains, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, as opposed to established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she repeats, adding humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Manifesting Dreams
Those who had doubts about Sennott previously will likely be regretting it currently. As part of she calls a “wild, full-circle” development, she appears to manifested an ideal role. A few years back she uploaded content called “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a show about city dwellers managing the perks of online celebrity (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being labeled as being a intoxicated stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). It would be tempting to create a series about internet celebrity that was extremely idealized—or, more problematic, one that belittled at the characters. This show does neither, creating a portrait of affluent millennial life that’s candid 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 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