🔗 Share this article

The performer enters the online meeting and immediately begins an apology. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, sounding genuinely apologetic. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she wants to justify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Fortunately, for a writer, this is exactly what you want to encounter. Additionally, it’s quite unsurprising. Those who have seen the fearlessly openly gay and outspoken movie titled Bottoms—that Sennott penned with the director and featured in alongside close companion The Bear’s standout—would already know that she holds a lot to discuss, be it about gender, relationships, or the appeal of forming a high-school combat group. And, once you finish her recent multi-episode show I Love LA, viewers realize that she holds even more insights regarding the darker side of modern youth (As a millennial, Sennott is a bridge for this generation, straddling eras skilled for bridging both generations).

Inspirations and Storytelling Approach

The comparisons to the iconic series Girls can’t be avoided and Sennott readily acknowledges enthusiastic, referencing the show alongside the classic series, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as influences for her series, which follows the journey of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and new talent manager Maia. However, the biggest spot on concept was reserved for Entourage, that show about an up-and-coming celebrity making his way in an often-seedy Hollywood (memorable line: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it during the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose to add a fresh perspective 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 idea for I Love LA originated—to some extent—from her own, at first fractious, relocation to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed occurrence for followers. It was an era that involved her grasp major truths, in her career and in private life. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “It resembled a series of extreme challenges…”

Early Beginnings

Raised in the East Coast, Sennott began writing and performing humor while studying acting at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she states. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

She seized control, performing at open mics with her friend and posting hysterical (and distinctly) unconventional online content online. One, Baby Cult, followed a group of women fetishistically fixated on pregnancy; a different one imagined being employed at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being caught in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she met Emma through NYU’s movie community and ended up appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a Jewish wake with shades of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her journey, she explains, has been peers supporting her, instead of the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she confirms, continuing with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Manifesting Dreams

Anyone who had doubts regarding Sennott previously will surely be regretting it today. As part of she calls a “incredibly circular” development, she has created her dream vehicle. A few years back she posted content titled “it’s LA” online, in which she lampooned Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about Angelenos managing benefits of internet fame (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your client being accused of being a intoxicated thief, and perhaps becoming a unreliable outcast). One might tempting to make a program about digital influence that was overly idealized—or, even less favorable, one that mocked at its subjects. The series avoids both, resulting in a representation of advantaged young adult life that’s candid about the grot and the glamour.

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 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