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The star joins the digital interview and right away begins an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she says, sounding really apologetic. Although she's only slightly behind, she feels compelled to clarify. “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. Besides, it’s fairly unsurprising. Those who know the boldly queer and unapologetically crass movie Bottoms—that she co-wrote with Emma Seligman and featured in alongside close companion Ayo Edebiri—would understand that Sennott holds much to share, be it about gender, sex, or the merits of forming a teen combat group. And, by the end the recent eight-part show titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she has further insights about the darker side of modern youth (At 30, Sennott is an honorary member to younger audiences, straddling eras with a knack for bridging both generations).

Influences and Storytelling Approach

Likenesses to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and Sennott admits to being enthusiastic, citing the show in addition to the classic series, Insecure and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for I Love LA, which follows the travails of a social media star Tallulah and her friend and aspiring talent manager Maia. However, the most significant influence on the moodboard was reserved for the popular sitcom, the program focusing on an emerging A-list actor navigating in a corrupt LA scene (memorable line: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). Sennott began viewing it throughout the pandemic, became “captivated”, and resolved to create a new version on it “for the girls and the gays”.

“My aim was to focus on digital fame over traditional entertainment, as my own beginnings were on the web,” she explains. The concept for the series came—in part—from her own, at first difficult, move to Los Angeles and from her cosmic event, a frequently discussed phenomenon for followers. It was a time that saw her understand significant life lessons, in her career and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” 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…”

Starting Out

Brought up in the East Coast, Sennott started writing and performing stand-up 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 says. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” 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, appearing at open mics with Edebiri and posting uproarious (and decidedly) unconventional comedy videos on the internet. A particular video, Baby Cult, followed several females obsessively obsessed with having babies; another portrayed working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being stuck in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through campus film circles and ended up starring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense film set at a funeral gathering with shades of the Safdie brothers’ movie. A recurring idea of her career, she says, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, instead of the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Not the gatekeepers”, she emphasizes, continuing with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Career Breakthrough

Those who questioned regarding her earlier will likely be regretting it today. In what she labels a “astonishingly complete” story, she appears to manifested her dream vehicle. A few years back she posted a video named about Los Angeles on social media, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s a lead creator (with the co-writer) of a comedy about Angelenos managing benefits of internet fame (such as socializing at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your client being labeled as being a substance-abusing thief, and perhaps becoming a unreliable pariah). One might simple to create a series about online fame that was extremely aspirational—or, more problematic, one that punched down at those depicted. The series steers clear of each, resulting in a representation of advantaged millennial life that’s candid about the grot and the appeal.

Empathetic Approach

“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