🔗 Share this article

The performer appears on the video call and right away starts an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, appearing truly apologetic. Despite being only a bit late, she needs to clarify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Fortunately, for a writer, this is precisely what one hopes to hear. Additionally, it’s pretty unsurprising. Anyone familiar with her boldly openly gay and unapologetically crass film Bottoms—that Sennott co-wrote with her creative partner and starred in with close companion the talented actress—will already know that Sennott holds much to say, whether about gender, relationships, or the merits of creating a youth fight club. Plus, once you finish the new eight-part show titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she holds additional perspectives about the darker side of Gen Z life (As a millennial, she is a bridge of the gang, straddling eras with a knack for bridging both generations).

Inspirations and Creative Vision

Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and the actress is enthusiastic, naming it in addition to the classic series, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as influences for her series, which follows the struggles of online personality Tallulah and close companion and fledgling talent manager Maia. Perhaps, the largest presence on the moodboard was reserved for Entourage, the show focusing on an up-and-coming celebrity making his way in a gritty entertainment industry (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott discovered it throughout COVID-19, became “captivated”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective 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 notes. The inspiration for I Love LA originated—in part—from personal, at first fractious, transition to LA and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about phenomenon for followers. This represented a phase that included her understand significant truths, work-wise and personally. “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. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Humble Origins

Brought up in New England, Sennott commenced creating and acting humor while pursuing theatre at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she explains. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “None of the university plays cast me either.” “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”

She decided to act independently, performing at open mics with Edebiri and posting uproarious (and very) bizarre skits digitally. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on characters obsessively obsessed with having babies; a different one envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being caught in a thriller. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and eventually starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, a stressful comedy set at a Jewish wake with hints of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The big theme of her path, she says, has been peers giving her a shot, rather than the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, continuing amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Career Breakthrough

Individuals who were skeptical about her earlier will surely be feeling foolish today. In what she describes as a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she has achieved the perfect project. In 2019 she shared content titled “it’s LA” online, in which she parodied movie previews (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a show about LA residents managing advantages of internet fame (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your associate being suspected of being a substance-abusing stealer, and potentially becoming a risky outcast). It would be simple to make a series about digital influence that was extremely aspirational—or, worse, one that belittled at its subjects. This show avoids both, resulting in a portrait of advantaged twentysomething life that’s candid about the grot and the appeal.

Nuanced Portrayal

“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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