🔗 Share this article

The performer appears on the video call and right away launches into an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she states, appearing truly apologetic. Although she's only a bit delayed, she feels compelled to clarify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Fortunately, during an interview, this is just what you want to experience. Moreover, it’s pretty unsurprising. Anyone familiar with the boldly LGBTQ+ and outspoken movie Bottoms—that Sennott collaborated on with the director and appeared in together with her friend Ayo Edebiri—can already know that she has a lot to share, be it about identity, intimacy, or the merits of forming a high-school fight club. And, after watching her latest multi-episode program I Love LA, it is clear that the star has additional perspectives regarding the darker side of young adulthood (As a millennial, she is a bridge of the gang, straddling eras adept for bridging millennials and Gen Z).

Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction

Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and the actress readily acknowledges an admirer, naming the show alongside the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as guides for the project, which tracks the journey of online personality Tallulah and her friend who is also fledgling talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the most significant spot on the moodboard was reserved for the popular sitcom, the program about a rising A-list actor navigating in an often-seedy entertainment industry (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott discovered it during COVID-19, became “captivated”, and resolved 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 explains. The concept for the series came—in part—from personal, originally fractious, relocation to LA and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about phenomenon for followers. It was a time that saw her grasp major insights, in her career and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “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

Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott began creating and acting 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. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”

Sennott took matters into her own hands, appearing at amateur nights with Ayo and sharing hysterical (and decidedly) unconventional skits online. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically obsessed with pregnancy; another portrayed working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being caught in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she encountered Emma through campus film circles and eventually starring in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful comedy set at a Jewish wake with shades of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her career, she says, has been peers giving her a shot, as opposed to the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, continuing with a laugh: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Rising Success

Those who had doubts regarding Sennott earlier will certainly be feeling foolish now. In what she calls a “astonishingly complete” story, she has achieved her dream vehicle. A few years back she posted content titled about Los Angeles on social media, in which she lampooned Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with her partner) of a show about city dwellers juggling the perks of online celebrity (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being suspected of being a intoxicated thief, and potentially becoming a risky pariah). Some could simple to produce a series about online fame that was extremely aspirational—or, worse, one that belittled at its subjects. The series does neither, making for a representation of advantaged twentysomething living that’s candid about the mess and the shine.

Empathetic Approach

“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