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The star appears on the digital interview and immediately begins an apology. “Apologies for the delay!” she states, appearing really apologetic. Despite being only slightly late, she needs to explain. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, in this context, this is exactly what is ideal to hear. Additionally, it’s pretty expected. Viewers familiar with her fearlessly openly gay and brash movie Bottoms—which Sennott collaborated on with her creative partner and appeared in with collaborator the talented actress—can already know that Sennott has plenty to share, be it about gender, sex, or the appeal of creating a high-school fight club. Furthermore, once you finish her recent seasonal program titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she carries even more insights about the struggles of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott is an honorary member for this generation, a tale-end millennial skilled for straddling different age groups).

Influences and Creative Vision

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show are inevitable and the actress admits to being enthusiastic, citing it together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as influences for the project, which details the struggles of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and aspiring talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the most significant spot on creative vision belonged to Entourage, the program focusing on a rising A-list actor navigating in a gritty LA scene (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott began viewing it amid the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose to create a new version on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.

“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she explains. The idea for the series emerged—in part—from her own, initially fractious, move to LA and from her saturn return, a popular occurrence for enthusiasts. This represented a phase that included her grasp some big insights, work-wise and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “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

Raised in the East Coast, Sennott began creating and acting humor while studying acting at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “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, taking the stage at amateur nights with Edebiri and sharing hysterical (and distinctly) unconventional skits online. A particular video, Baby Cult, centered on several females intensely obsessed with having babies; a different one imagined being employed at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being trapped in a thriller. By chance, she connected with Emma through the university’s film scene and eventually featuring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a stressful dramedy set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the intense thriller. The central motif of her career, she says, has been peers giving her a shot, rather than the industry at large. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, stating humorously: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”

Manifesting Dreams

Those who had doubts about Sennott then will certainly be feeling foolish now. Through she labels a “wild, full-circle” story, she seems to have manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she posted content titled on LA life online, in which she parodied film promos (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a series about LA residents managing benefits of internet fame (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your friend being suspected of being a substance-abusing criminal, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” persona non grata). Some could easy to create a show about online fame that was horribly aspirational—or, worse, one that mocked at the characters. I Love LA steers clear of each, making for a representation of affluent young adult life that’s frank about the mess and the glamour.

Nuanced Portrayal

“Many programs portray youth and online life with disdain and mockery,” 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