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The performer joins the video call and immediately launches into an explanation. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, sounding really remorseful. Although she's only a couple of minutes late, she needs to explain. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, in this context, this is just what you want to encounter. Besides, it’s quite unsurprising. Anyone who have seen the boldly queer and brash film Bottoms—which she penned with the director and starred in together with her friend The Bear’s standout—can already know that Sennott has a lot to share, whether on gender, relationships, or the merits of creating a youth combat group. And, by the end her recent eight-part HBO series I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she has even more insights regarding the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, Sennott represents a bridge for this generation, on the cusp with a knack for connecting both generations).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

Parallels to the iconic series Girls naturally arise and the actress admits to being enthusiastic, referencing the show together with the classic series, Issa Rae’s show and the innovative program as inspirations for her series, which follows the travails of a social media star Tallulah and close companion and new talent manager Sennott’s character. Perhaps, the most significant presence on creative vision went to Entourage, the show about an up-and-coming A-list actor succeeding in an often-seedy Hollywood (choice quote: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott discovered it during lockdown, became “captivated”, and resolved to add a fresh perspective 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 explains. The concept for this project originated—partly—from her own, originally rocky, transition to LA and from her saturn return, a popular phenomenon for enthusiasts. This represented a phase that included her grasp significant insights, work-wise and individually. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she says. “After relocating to Los Angeles in my mid-twenties, I found stability, only for things to crumble. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”

Early Beginnings

Brought up in New England, the star started creating and acting stand-up while studying performance at a prestigious arts school. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” 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. “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”

She took matters into her own hands, appearing at live shows with Edebiri and uploading uproarious (and distinctly) unconventional online content on the internet. A particular video, titled Baby Cult, centered on characters obsessively obsessed with motherhood; another imagined being employed at a trendy retail outlet as akin to being trapped in a horror film. By chance, she met Seligman through NYU’s movie community and ultimately appearing in her first film, Shiva Baby, a stressful film set at a funeral gathering with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her journey, she notes, has been contemporaries offering opportunities, instead of the industry at large. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, adding humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Career Breakthrough

Those who questioned about her previously will certainly be kicking themselves now. In what she calls a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she seems to have achieved her dream vehicle. Previously she shared content named on LA life online, in which she mocked movie previews (“Everyone’s hooked on something”). Now, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a show about city dwellers juggling benefits of internet fame (such as socializing at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being labeled as being a intoxicated thief, and potentially becoming a risky persona non grata). It would be easy to create a program about digital influence that was horribly glamorous—or, more problematic, one that mocked at its subjects. I Love LA does neither, resulting in a portrait of affluent young adult existence that’s candid about the mess and the appeal.

Empathetic Approach

“Numerous series present younger generations and digital culture in a derogatory manner,” 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