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The star appears on the video call and immediately starts an excuse. “Apologies for the delay!” she says, appearing genuinely regretful. Despite being only a couple of minutes behind, she wants to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Luckily, for a writer, that’s just what you want to experience. Moreover, it’s quite expected. Anyone familiar with her boldly openly gay and brash film titled Bottoms—that she co-wrote with her creative partner and starred in with her friend The Bear’s standout—would understand that Sennott possesses a lot to share, whether on identity, intimacy, or the pros of forming a youth fight club. Furthermore, once you finish the new eight-part HBO series titled I Love LA, viewers realize that she holds additional perspectives on the darker side of young adulthood (Now in her thirties, she serves as an honorary member to younger audiences, straddling eras adept for bridging millennials and Gen Z).

Guiding Lights and Storytelling Approach

The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and Sennott readily acknowledges an admirer, naming it alongside the classic series, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as influences for her series, which details the journey of online personality Tallulah and her friend and aspiring agent portrayed by Sennott. However, the largest presence on the moodboard went to Entourage, the HBO sitcom focusing on a rising A-list actor succeeding in an often-seedy LA scene (notable statement: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). Sennott began viewing it amid the pandemic, became “hooked”, and chose to add a fresh perspective 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 I Love LA came—in part—from personal, originally fractious, relocation to Tinseltown and from her astrological phase, a frequently discussed phenomenon for astrology heads. This represented an era that saw her learn significant truths, professionally and individually. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she recalls. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” It was almost like these biblical tests …”

Humble Origins

Raised in New England, Sennott began developing and showcasing humor while studying performance at NYU’s Tisch. “Despite trying every conventional route, I couldn’t find my footing,” she states. “I tried out for all the NYU comedy groups, and got rejected from all of them. “None of the university plays cast me either.” “It left me questioning my purpose and place.”

She took matters into her own hands, appearing at amateur nights with Edebiri and posting hilarious (and very) weird skits on the internet. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women obsessively fixated on having babies; a different one imagined working at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being trapped in a horror film. In a neat twist of fate, she connected with Seligman through campus film circles and ultimately starring in her directorial debut, Shiva Baby, an anxious film set at a religious event with shades of the intense thriller. The big theme of her journey, she explains, has been contemporaries supporting her, instead of traditional networks. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “They were not involved”, she emphasizes, adding with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Career Breakthrough

Anyone who had doubts regarding her previously will certainly be feeling foolish now. Through she describes as a “astonishingly complete” story, she appears to manifested her dream vehicle. In 2019 she posted a clip called on LA life on social media, in which she lampooned movie previews (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Six years on, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a show about Angelenos managing benefits of internet fame (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being accused of being a drug-addled stealer, and potentially becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). Some could easy to produce a show about online fame that was overly idealized—or, more problematic, one that mocked at its subjects. The series steers clear of each, creating a representation of advantaged young adult life that’s honest about the chaos and the shine.

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 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