The star enters the online meeting and immediately starts an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, sounding really regretful. She is only a bit late, she wants to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Thankfully, in this context, that’s just what one hopes to hear. Moreover, it’s fairly unsurprising. Viewers familiar with her unapologetically openly gay and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—that she penned with Emma Seligman and appeared in alongside her friend The Bear’s standout—can already know that Sennott holds plenty to discuss, ranging from on roles, relationships, or the merits of starting a youth fight club. Furthermore, once you finish the new multi-episode program I Love LA, viewers realize that the star has further perspectives on the struggles of modern youth (As a millennial, she represents a bridge for this generation, a tale-end millennial skilled for straddling both generations).
Influences and Creative Vision
Likenesses to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott readily acknowledges an admirer, naming it in addition to the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and new agent portrayed by Sennott. Notably, the largest influence on the moodboard belonged to Entourage, that HBO sitcom about an emerging celebrity navigating in an often-seedy Hollywood (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She began viewing it throughout COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and resolved to put her own twist 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 inspiration for I Love LA originated—in part—from her own, at first difficult, relocation to Los Angeles and from the cosmic event, a popular event for followers. It was an era that included her learn some big life lessons, in her career and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “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 Connecticut, the star began writing and performing stand-up while enrolled in theatre 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. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
She seized control, appearing at amateur nights with Ayo and uploading uproarious (and decidedly) bizarre comedy videos digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically obsessed with motherhood; another envisioned working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being stuck in a scary movie. By chance, she met Seligman through NYU’s movie community and eventually appearing in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, a tense dramedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of Uncut Gems. The big theme of her journey, she says, has been people her own age offering opportunities, rather than established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she confirms, stating humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Those who were skeptical about her earlier will surely be feeling foolish today. As part of she calls a “incredibly circular” development, she has created an ideal role. A few years back she posted a video titled on LA life on social media, in which she parodied film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s executive producer (with the co-writer) of a show about LA residents balancing advantages of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your associate being suspected of being a intoxicated thief, and possibly becoming a risky persona non grata). It would be tempting to make a series about online fame that was horribly idealized—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at its subjects. This show does neither, making for a portrait of advantaged millennial existence that’s honest about the mess and the glamour.
Balanced Perspective
“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
