The star enters the online meeting and at once begins an explanation. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, appearing truly remorseful. Although she's only a bit late, she wants to justify. “I have such a problem, because I’m a yapper on the phone. “Earlier calls made me late—I just can’t stop chatting!” Thankfully, during an interview, that’s precisely what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s pretty expected. Viewers familiar with the unapologetically queer and unapologetically crass project titled Bottoms—which Sennott penned with her creative partner and starred in with close companion The Bear’s standout—will be aware that she holds plenty to discuss, ranging from on identity, sex, or the merits of creating a teen fight club. Plus, after watching the new seasonal HBO series I Love LA, it is clear that the star holds even more thoughts regarding the darker side of Gen Z life (At 30, she is an honorary member to younger audiences, straddling eras with a knack for straddling millennials and Gen Z).
Guiding Lights and Artistic Direction
The comparisons to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show naturally arise and the actress admits to being an admirer, citing the show together with the HBO hit, Issa Rae’s show and Atlanta as inspirations for the project, which follows the journey of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and her friend who is also fledgling representative Sennott’s character. However, the most significant influence on creative vision was reserved for the popular sitcom, the program about an up-and-coming Hollywood star succeeding in a gritty LA scene (choice quote: “happiness eludes everyone but failures in this city”). She discovered it amid lockdown, became “captivated”, and decided to add a fresh perspective on it “for the girls and the gays”.
“I sought to highlight online platforms as the new industry, since my professional journey launched there,” she explains. The idea for the series originated—to some extent—from her own, at first difficult, move to LA and from the cosmic event, a popular phenomenon for enthusiasts. This represented an era that involved her understand some big insights, in her career and personally. “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. It was almost like these biblical tests …”
Starting Out
Raised in New England, Sennott commenced developing and showcasing comedy 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 says. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “None of the university plays cast me either.” And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott took matters into her own hands, performing at amateur nights with Ayo and sharing hilarious (and decidedly) bizarre skits online. A particular video, Baby Cult, depicted several females fetishistically drawn to having babies; a different one imagined working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as akin to being caught in a thriller. Interestingly, she met Seligman through campus film circles and eventually featuring in her first film, Shiva Baby, a tense comedy set at a funeral gathering with shades of the intense thriller. A recurring idea of her path, she explains, has been peers offering opportunities, rather than established gatekeepers. So the old guard wasn’t helpful? “Definitely not them”, she emphasizes, continuing amusedly: “Our victory isn’t their goal.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who questioned about her earlier will surely be regretting it today. Through she calls a “astonishingly complete” development, she seems to have manifested her dream vehicle. Previously she shared a video named “it’s LA” on the internet, in which she lampooned film promos (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s the co-showrunner (with Emma Barrie) of a series about city dwellers managing the perks of online celebrity (such as celebrating at Elijah Wood’s house) with downsides (your associate being suspected of being a intoxicated criminal, and perhaps becoming a unreliable outcast). It would be easy to create a series about online fame that was horribly idealized—or, even less favorable, one that belittled at its subjects. The series does neither, making for a depiction of affluent twentysomething living that’s honest about the mess and the shine.
Nuanced Portrayal
“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
