The actress and writer on her uproarious show about that chaotic appeal of Gen Z existence
The star enters the video call and right away launches into an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she states, seeming truly remorseful. She is only a bit late, she feels compelled to clarify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, during an interview, this is just what you want to encounter. Besides, it’s fairly predictable. Those who have seen her fearlessly LGBTQ+ and brash movie titled Bottoms—which Sennott collaborated on with her creative partner and featured in with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—will be aware that she possesses plenty to share, ranging from on identity, relationships, or the merits of starting a teen fight club. Furthermore, once you finish the recent seasonal program titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she carries additional thoughts regarding the struggles of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott represents an honorary member of the gang, on the cusp skilled for connecting different age groups).
Influences and Creative Vision
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls are inevitable and the actress admits to being an admirer, citing the show together with the HBO hit, the acclaimed comedy and the innovative program as inspirations for I Love LA, which follows the travails of an influencer played by Odessa A’Zion and ally who is also new talent manager portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the biggest spot on creative vision belonged to Entourage, that HBO sitcom depicting an up-and-coming Hollywood star succeeding in a corrupt Hollywood (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). Sennott began viewing it during the pandemic, became “captivated”, and resolved to create a new version on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she notes. The idea for the series originated—partly—from her own, originally difficult, move to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a frequently discussed phenomenon for astrology heads. It was a time that involved her learn major insights, in her career and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “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 the East Coast, Sennott began writing and performing comedy while enrolled in performance at NYU’s Tisch. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “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, taking the stage at amateur nights with Ayo and sharing uproarious (and decidedly) unconventional comedy videos online. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on several females obsessively obsessed with pregnancy; a different one imagined working at the brand Hollister as similar to being caught in a horror film. By chance, she encountered Seligman through campus film circles and eventually starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a funeral gathering with hints of the intense thriller. The central motif of her career, she notes, has been people her own age offering opportunities, rather than the industry at large. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “They were not involved”, she repeats, continuing amusedly: “They don’t want us to win.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who were skeptical about Sennott earlier will likely be kicking themselves now. In what she describes as a “wild, full-circle” development, she appears to manifested the perfect project. In 2019 she shared content titled “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Years later, she’s executive producer (with the co-writer) of a series about city dwellers juggling benefits of internet fame (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with drawbacks (your friend being accused of being a intoxicated thief, and potentially becoming a unreliable pariah). It would be simple to create a series about digital influence that was extremely aspirational—or, worse, one that mocked at the characters. This show does neither, making for a portrait of advantaged young adult existence that’s frank about the chaos 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