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The performer enters the online meeting and at once launches into an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she exclaims, sounding really regretful. She is only a bit behind, she feels compelled to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Luckily, for a writer, this is exactly what one hopes to encounter. Additionally, it’s pretty predictable. Those who have seen the fearlessly openly gay and outspoken project Bottoms—that she co-wrote with Emma Seligman and starred in together with her friend Ayo Edebiri—will already know that Sennott holds a lot to say, be it on gender, relationships, or the appeal of forming a high-school fight club. Plus, by the end the new multi-episode show titled I Love LA, it is clear that the star carries additional insights on the challenges of Gen Z life (Now in her thirties, she serves as an honorary member of the gang, on the cusp with a knack for straddling millennials and Gen Z).

Inspirations and Artistic Direction

Parallels to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show naturally arise and the actress admits to being a fan, naming the show alongside the classic series, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as guides for her series, which details the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion who is also new talent manager portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the biggest presence on the moodboard went to Entourage, that show depicting an up-and-coming Hollywood star navigating in an often-seedy entertainment industry (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it throughout COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and decided to put her own twist on it “for the girls and the gays”.

“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she says. The idea for the series originated—partly—from personal, initially fractious, move to LA and from the saturn return, a popular phenomenon for followers. It was a phase that involved her understand significant truths, in her career and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “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…”

Humble Origins

Raised in Connecticut, Sennott commenced developing and showcasing humor while enrolled in acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she states. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”

She took matters into her own hands, appearing at amateur nights with her friend and sharing hilarious (and decidedly) weird comedy videos on the internet. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women fetishistically fixated on pregnancy; another envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being trapped in a horror film. Interestingly, she connected with Emma through campus film circles and ended up featuring in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a funeral gathering with echoes of Uncut Gems. A recurring idea of her journey, she says, has been peers supporting her, rather than traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, adding humorously: “They don’t want us to win.”

Manifesting Dreams

Anyone who questioned about Sennott earlier will likely be regretting it today. Through she labels a “incredibly circular” story, she seems to have created an ideal role. A few years back she uploaded content named on LA life on social media, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a comedy about Angelenos managing benefits of digital stardom (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being suspected of being a substance-abusing stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). It would be easy to create a series about online fame that was extremely aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that mocked at those depicted. This show avoids both, resulting in a depiction of privileged twentysomething living that’s honest about the grot and the appeal.

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