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The star appears on the video call and right away starts an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, appearing genuinely regretful. She is only a couple of minutes delayed, she feels compelled to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. 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 encounter. Moreover, it’s fairly expected. Anyone who know her fearlessly openly gay and outspoken project Bottoms—that Sennott collaborated on with her creative partner and featured in with collaborator the talented actress—will be aware that Sennott has plenty to discuss, be it about identity, intimacy, or the pros of creating a high-school combat group. Furthermore, after watching her latest multi-episode program I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she has additional thoughts on the darker side of young adulthood (At 30, Sennott is a bridge for this generation, a tale-end millennial adept for straddling millennials and Gen Z).

Inspirations and Storytelling Approach

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress is a fan, naming the show together with Sex and the City, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for I Love LA, which follows the travails of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and ally and aspiring representative portrayed by Sennott. However, the most significant presence on the moodboard was reserved for Entourage, the show depicting an up-and-coming A-list actor navigating in a gritty LA scene (choice quote: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it throughout COVID-19, became “captivated”, and decided to put her own twist 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 says. The concept for this project came—partly—from her own, initially fractious, relocation to Tinseltown and from the cosmic event, a popular event for enthusiasts. It was an era that included her learn significant insights, work-wise and individually. “In my early 20s I was so messy, crying in public everywhere, all the time,” 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…”

Early Beginnings

Growing up in the East Coast, Sennott started writing and performing comedy while enrolled in performance at a prestigious arts school. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” 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. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

She took matters into her own hands, performing at live shows with Ayo and uploading hilarious (and decidedly) bizarre skits on the internet. One, Baby Cult, depicted characters obsessively fixated on pregnancy; another envisioned working at a trendy retail outlet as like being stuck in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she met Emma through NYU’s movie community and eventually featuring in her first film, titled Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a religious event with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her career, she explains, has been contemporaries supporting her, instead of established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she confirms, adding with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Manifesting Dreams

Anyone who were skeptical about her previously will surely be regretting it now. As part of she describes as a “astonishingly complete” development, she appears to created an ideal role. A few years back she shared content named about Los Angeles on social media, in which she lampooned film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with her partner) of a comedy about city dwellers juggling the perks of digital stardom (such as celebrating at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled thief, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). One might tempting to create a show about online fame that was overly aspirational—or, even less favorable, one that punched down at its subjects. I Love LA does neither, creating a portrait of advantaged millennial living that’s candid about the chaos and the shine.

Nuanced Portrayal

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