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The star appears on the online meeting and immediately begins an excuse. “Oh my God – I’m sorry!” she exclaims, sounding genuinely remorseful. Although she's only a couple of minutes behind, she needs to justify. “I tend to talk too much during calls. “Previous discussions went over, and I realized I talk too much!” Fortunately, for a writer, that’s just what you want to hear. Moreover, it’s pretty predictable. Viewers who know her fearlessly queer and unapologetically crass project Bottoms—which Sennott penned with her creative partner and featured in alongside collaborator Ayo Edebiri—would already know that she holds much to discuss, ranging from on gender, relationships, or the merits of creating a youth combat group. Furthermore, once you finish her new multi-episode show titled I Love LA, it becomes obvious that she holds additional insights about the darker side of young adulthood (At 30, Sennott is an honorary member of the gang, straddling eras skilled for connecting both generations).

Guiding Lights and Creative Vision

Parallels to Lena Dunham’s Girls naturally arise and the actress admits to being a fan, naming the show together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as influences for I Love LA, which tracks the struggles of a social media star played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend and aspiring talent manager portrayed by Sennott. Perhaps, the most significant spot on the moodboard belonged to Entourage, the HBO sitcom depicting a rising Hollywood star succeeding in an often-seedy LA scene (memorable line: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She started watching it amid COVID-19, became “hooked”, and chose to add a fresh perspective on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.

“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she explains. The concept for I Love LA emerged—in part—from her own, initially rocky, transition to Tinseltown and from the saturn return, a much-talked-about event for astrology heads. That period marked a phase that included her learn major life lessons, in her career and in private life. “My twenties began with constant public emotional outbursts and disorganization,” she says. “Settling in LA during my mid-twenties brought calm, but soon everything unraveled.” It was almost like these biblical tests …”

Humble Origins

Raised in Connecticut, Sennott began developing and showcasing stand-up while pursuing acting at New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she says. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. “I wondered why I was even there at all.”

Sennott took matters into her own hands, taking the stage at open mics with her friend and posting hilarious (and very) weird skits digitally. One, titled Baby Cult, centered on a group of women obsessively obsessed with having babies; another envisioned being employed at a trendy retail outlet as similar to being caught in a horror film. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through campus film circles and eventually appearing in her initial project, titled Shiva Baby, an anxious dramedy set at a religious event with echoes of the Safdie brothers’ movie. The central motif of her journey, she explains, has been contemporaries supporting her, as opposed to established gatekeepers. Does that mean bypassing the usual powers? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, continuing with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”

Rising Success

Anyone who questioned about Sennott then will certainly be regretting it currently. In what she calls a “incredibly circular” turn of events, she appears to achieved her dream vehicle. Previously she uploaded a video titled on LA life on the internet, in which she mocked Hollywood trailers (“I’m addicted to drugs – we all are”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a show about LA residents managing the perks of internet fame (such as celebrating at a celebrity’s house) with its pitfalls (your friend being suspected of being a drug-addled thief, and potentially becoming a unreliable persona non grata). Some could easy to produce a show about internet celebrity that was overly glamorous—or, worse, one that mocked at the characters. I Love LA steers clear of each, resulting in a portrait of advantaged twentysomething existence that’s frank about the mess 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 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