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The performer appears on the video call and immediately begins an apology. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she exclaims, appearing really regretful. Despite being only slightly late, she feels compelled to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Thankfully, in this context, that’s precisely what you want to experience. Moreover, it’s pretty unsurprising. Viewers familiar with her fearlessly queer and brash project Bottoms—which she penned with the director and appeared in together with close companion Ayo Edebiri—would understand that she holds plenty to say, whether on roles, sex, or the merits of starting a teen combat group. Furthermore, by the end the recent eight-part HBO series I Love LA, it becomes obvious that the star holds even more perspectives regarding the challenges of modern youth (At 30, Sennott serves as an honorary member for this generation, on the cusp with a knack for connecting different age groups).

Influences and Storytelling Approach

The comparisons to the iconic series Girls are inevitable and Sennott is an admirer, citing the show in addition to Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as inspirations for the project, which tracks the struggles of online personality Tallulah and her friend who is also new agent portrayed by Sennott. Notably, the largest spot on concept was reserved for the HBO series, that show about an emerging Hollywood star succeeding in an often-seedy LA scene (notable statement: “nobody’s happy in this town except for the losers”). She started watching it amid COVID-19, became “hooked”, and resolved to create a new version 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—in part—from personal, at first rocky, move to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a popular event for enthusiasts. That period marked a time that included her learn major truths, in her career and in private life. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she admits. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. It was almost like these biblical tests …”

Early Beginnings

Brought up in New England, Sennott commenced creating and acting humor while studying theatre at a prestigious arts school. “I went through all the proper channels to try to perform, and they weren’t gelling,” she explains. “Every campus humor group turned me down after tryouts.” “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”

Sennott took matters into her own hands, appearing at live shows with her friend and sharing uproarious (and distinctly) weird comedy videos digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, followed several females intensely fixated on having babies; another imagined working at a trendy retail outlet as like being caught in a horror film. By chance, she encountered Seligman through the university’s film scene and ultimately featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a Jewish wake with hints of Uncut Gems. The central motif of her path, she notes, has been people her own age offering opportunities, instead of traditional networks. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Not the gatekeepers”, she repeats, continuing humorously: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Rising Success

Those who had doubts regarding Sennott earlier will likely be regretting it today. In what she describes as a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she appears to created an ideal role. Previously she posted a video named about Los Angeles online, in which she lampooned Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Now, she’s a lead creator (with Emma Barrie) of a show about Angelenos juggling the perks of online celebrity (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being suspected of being a drug-addled criminal, and possibly becoming a “brand unsafe” outcast). It would be tempting to create a series about internet celebrity that was overly idealized—or, more problematic, one that mocked at its subjects. The series avoids both, making for a portrait of affluent twentysomething living that’s frank about the chaos and the glamour.

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