The star appears on the online meeting and immediately launches into an explanation. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she says, sounding really remorseful. Despite being only a couple of minutes delayed, she needs to justify. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, in this context, this is precisely what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s pretty expected. Those who know her fearlessly queer and brash project Bottoms—which Sennott collaborated on with Emma Seligman and featured in with collaborator The Bear’s standout—would already know that she has plenty to share, be it on roles, relationships, or the appeal of forming a high-school fight club. Plus, after watching her latest seasonal HBO series I Love LA, viewers realize that the star carries even more thoughts about the challenges of modern youth (As a millennial, Sennott represents a relatable figure for this generation, straddling eras skilled for bridging different age groups).
Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach
Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls can’t be avoided and the actress is a fan, naming it in addition to Sex and the City, the acclaimed comedy and Atlanta as influences for her series, which tracks the journey of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also aspiring representative Sennott’s character. Notably, the most significant influence on concept was reserved for the popular sitcom, the show about a rising celebrity navigating in a gritty entertainment industry (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott started watching it amid COVID-19, became “captivated”, and chose to put her own twist on it “with female and queer audiences in mind”.
“I wanted to make a show where the internet, not Hollywood, was the industry, because my career started online,” she notes. The idea for the series originated—in part—from firsthand, originally rocky, move to LA and from her astrological phase, a much-talked-about event for astrology heads. This represented a phase that included her understand some big life lessons, work-wise and in private life. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she admits. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Humble Origins
Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott commenced developing and showcasing comedy while enrolled in performance at a prestigious arts school. “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. I tried out for all the NYU plays and didn’t make it into any of them. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”
She decided to act independently, performing at open mics with Edebiri and sharing hilarious (and decidedly) weird skits online. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females obsessively fixated on pregnancy; a different one portrayed being employed at the brand Hollister as similar to being stuck in a horror film. By chance, she connected with Emma through NYU’s movie community and ultimately featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a religious event with echoes of the intense thriller. The central motif of her journey, she notes, has been contemporaries supporting her, as opposed to the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, stating with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Individuals who questioned about her earlier will surely be feeling foolish now. As part of she describes as a “wild, full-circle” development, she seems to have achieved the perfect project. A few years back she posted a video called “it’s LA” online, in which she parodied film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a show about city dwellers juggling the perks of internet fame (such as partying at a celebrity’s house) with downsides (your client being labeled as being a drug-addled stealer, and possibly becoming a unreliable persona non grata). One might tempting to produce a series about internet celebrity that was extremely glamorous—or, worse, one that punched down at those depicted. The series does neither, resulting in a representation of affluent millennial living that’s honest about the mess and the appeal.
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 observes. “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
