The performer joins the online meeting and at once starts an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, sounding truly regretful. She is only slightly behind, she wants to clarify. “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!” Thankfully, for a writer, that’s exactly what you want to hear. Moreover, it’s pretty expected. Viewers who know the unapologetically openly gay and outspoken film Bottoms—which she collaborated on with the director and featured in with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—can be aware that Sennott possesses a lot to share, be it about identity, relationships, or the merits of creating a teen brawl society. And, once you finish her new seasonal program I Love LA, viewers realize that she has additional perspectives about the struggles of Gen Z life (At 30, she represents a relatable figure for this generation, straddling eras skilled for straddling different age groups).
Inspirations and Artistic Direction
Parallels to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott admits to being enthusiastic, citing it alongside the classic series, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for I Love LA, which tracks the struggles of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and ally and aspiring agent Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the biggest spot on creative vision was reserved for the popular sitcom, the program about an up-and-coming celebrity succeeding in a corrupt entertainment industry (notable statement: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She started watching it during COVID-19, became “obsessed”, and resolved to create a new version 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 inspiration for this project came—partly—from firsthand, at first difficult, move to Los Angeles and from her astrological phase, a frequently discussed occurrence for astrology heads. That period marked a phase that involved her understand significant insights, work-wise and personally. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” she recalls. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Humble Origins
Raised in Connecticut, Sennott started writing and performing stand-up while enrolled in acting at NYU’s Tisch. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, performing at live shows with Ayo and sharing uproarious (and distinctly) weird online content digitally. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, followed characters obsessively drawn to having babies; a different one envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being caught in a scary movie. Interestingly, she connected with Emma through NYU’s movie community and ended up featuring in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her path, she notes, has been peers giving her a shot, instead of traditional networks. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, continuing amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who were skeptical regarding her earlier will likely be feeling foolish currently. In what she describes as a “astonishingly complete” development, she seems to have achieved her dream vehicle. In 2019 she posted a clip named about Los Angeles online, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos juggling the perks of online celebrity (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being accused of being a intoxicated criminal, and perhaps becoming a unreliable outcast). One might simple to make a series about digital influence that was horribly aspirational—or, worse, one that mocked at the characters. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a representation of advantaged young adult existence that’s honest about the mess and the glamour.
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 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
