🔗 Share this article

The performer enters the digital interview and at once launches into an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she states, sounding really apologetic. Although she's only slightly late, she needs to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, during an interview, that’s exactly what is ideal to encounter. Besides, it’s fairly expected. Anyone who know her boldly openly gay and brash project Bottoms—which she collaborated on with the director and appeared in alongside her friend Ayo Edebiri—can understand that she has a lot to say, whether about gender, relationships, or the pros of creating a high-school brawl society. Plus, by the end the new eight-part program I Love LA, it is clear that she holds further insights on the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, she represents a bridge to younger audiences, a tale-end millennial with a knack for connecting different age groups).

Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction

Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and the actress readily acknowledges a fan, naming the show together with Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as inspirations for the project, which details the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and aspiring talent manager portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the biggest influence on creative vision belonged to the HBO series, the show about a rising celebrity making his way in a gritty Hollywood (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She started watching it during the pandemic, became “captivated”, and decided 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 notes. The idea for I Love LA originated—partly—from personal, at first fractious, relocation to Los Angeles and from the astrological phase, a much-talked-about occurrence for astrology heads. It was a phase that saw her understand some big insights, professionally and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” It was almost like these biblical tests …”

Early Beginnings

Raised in Connecticut, Sennott started writing and performing stand-up while enrolled in acting at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she says. “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.”

She seized control, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and sharing hilarious (and very) unconventional skits online. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on characters intensely drawn to pregnancy; another envisioned being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being caught in a thriller. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and eventually featuring in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a funeral gathering with shades of the intense thriller. The big theme of her path, she says, has been people her own age supporting her, as opposed to established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, adding humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Rising Success

Anyone who had doubts regarding Sennott earlier will surely be feeling foolish now. Through she describes as a “incredibly circular” development, she seems to have created an ideal role. A few years back she uploaded a clip called on LA life on the internet, in which she lampooned film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a series about Angelenos managing advantages of internet fame (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being suspected of being a drug-addled thief, and potentially becoming a unreliable outcast). It would be tempting to make a series about digital influence that was horribly glamorous—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at the characters. The series does neither, creating a depiction of privileged millennial life that’s honest about the grot 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 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