The performer appears on the digital interview and at once starts an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, sounding really apologetic. Despite being only a bit behind, she needs to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Thankfully, for a writer, that’s precisely what you want to hear. Besides, it’s quite predictable. Viewers familiar with her unapologetically openly gay and outspoken film titled Bottoms—which she penned with Emma Seligman and appeared in together with her friend Ayo Edebiri—can already know that Sennott holds much to discuss, be it about gender, sex, or the appeal of creating a youth fight club. Plus, once you finish her new eight-part show titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she has additional perspectives on the darker side of young adulthood (As a millennial, she serves as a relatable figure of the gang, straddling eras adept for straddling different age groups).
Inspirations and Artistic Direction
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show can’t be avoided and Sennott admits to being an admirer, referencing it alongside the HBO hit, Insecure and Atlanta as influences for the project, which tracks the journey of an influencer Tallulah and her friend and aspiring talent manager Maia. Notably, the most significant influence on creative vision went to Entourage, the program about an up-and-coming A-list actor making his way in a corrupt LA scene (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott discovered it during the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose to put her own twist on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she explains. The inspiration for the series emerged—in part—from personal, at first fractious, relocation to LA and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed phenomenon for enthusiasts. It was a time that involved her learn major insights, in her career and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” 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…”
Early Beginnings
Raised in the East Coast, Sennott started developing and showcasing stand-up while enrolled in performance at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
She decided to act independently, appearing at amateur nights with Ayo and sharing uproarious (and very) weird online content digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females fetishistically fixated on having babies; another portrayed being employed at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being caught in a horror film. By chance, she encountered Emma through NYU’s movie community and eventually featuring in her directorial debut, titled Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a Jewish wake with echoes of the intense thriller. The big theme of her career, she explains, has been contemporaries giving her a shot, as opposed to established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, adding amusedly: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Rising Success
Anyone who questioned regarding her then will surely be kicking themselves currently. Through she calls a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she appears to achieved her dream vehicle. In 2019 she uploaded a clip called “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she parodied movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about city dwellers juggling advantages of internet fame (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your client being labeled as being a intoxicated thief, and perhaps becoming a unreliable pariah). It would be tempting to create a program about internet celebrity that was overly idealized—or, more problematic, one that mocked at its subjects. The series avoids both, making for a representation of affluent young adult life that’s candid about the grot and the shine.
Nuanced Portrayal
“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
