The star joins the online meeting and at once starts an excuse. “I can’t believe I’m late!” she states, appearing genuinely remorseful. She is only slightly behind, she needs to explain. “My phone conversations always run long.” I had two calls before this, and I’m like, I’ve gotta stop talking!” Thankfully, during an interview, that’s exactly what you want to encounter. Moreover, it’s fairly predictable. Viewers familiar with the boldly queer and brash project titled Bottoms—that Sennott penned with the director and featured in with collaborator Ayo Edebiri—would understand that Sennott holds plenty to discuss, be it about roles, intimacy, or the pros of forming a youth combat group. Furthermore, once you finish her latest seasonal program I Love LA, viewers realize that the star holds additional perspectives regarding the challenges of modern youth (As a millennial, she serves as a relatable figure of the gang, on the cusp skilled for connecting both generations).
Influences and Storytelling Approach
Likenesses to Lena Dunham’s groundbreaking show naturally arise and the actress readily acknowledges a fan, referencing the show in addition to Sex and the City, Issa Rae’s show and Donald Glover’s series as guides for her series, which details the travails of online personality played by Odessa A’Zion and close companion and new talent manager portrayed by Sennott. However, the biggest influence on concept was reserved for the popular sitcom, the show focusing on an emerging Hollywood star navigating in a corrupt LA scene (memorable line: “only the unsuccessful find joy here”). She discovered it during COVID-19, became “hooked”, and chose to put her own twist on it “targeting women and LGBTQ+ viewers”.
“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 came—partly—from personal, originally difficult, transition to Tinseltown and from her saturn return, a much-talked-about event for astrology heads. This represented a time that saw her understand some big truths, work-wise and personally. “During my younger years, I was chaotic, often breaking down in public,” she says. “In my mid-20s, I moved to LA and got settled. And then I felt like everything started to just fall apart. “The struggles felt almost mythic in scale…”
Humble Origins
Brought up in Connecticut, Sennott began developing and showcasing stand-up while studying theatre at a prestigious arts school. “I followed traditional paths to get on stage, but nothing clicked,” she states. “Auditions for university comedy troupes led to universal rejection. “Theatre productions at school also didn’t accept me. And I just felt like, what am I doing here?”
Sennott decided to act independently, taking the stage at live shows with Edebiri and posting uproarious (and very) bizarre online content on the internet. One, titled Baby Cult, depicted several females fetishistically fixated on pregnancy; a different one envisioned working at the preppy clothing store Hollister as like being caught in a thriller. Interestingly, she encountered Emma through campus film circles and ended up featuring in her initial project, Shiva Baby, a stressful comedy set at a funeral gathering with shades of the intense thriller. The central motif of her career, she says, has been peers supporting her, instead of established gatekeepers. So, not the gatekeepers, then? “Definitely not them”, she repeats, continuing with a laugh: “They prefer we don’t succeed.”
Manifesting Dreams
Anyone who had doubts regarding Sennott previously will likely be regretting it today. As part of she describes as a “wild, full-circle” turn of events, she appears to manifested her dream vehicle. In 2019 she shared a video titled on LA life on the internet, in which she parodied Hollywood trailers (“Substance abuse is rampant here”). Years later, she’s executive producer (with her partner) of a series about city dwellers juggling the perks of digital stardom (such as partying at a famous actor’s house) with its pitfalls (your client being labeled as being a intoxicated stealer, and perhaps becoming a “brand unsafe” pariah). One might simple to produce a series about online fame that was horribly glamorous—or, worse, one that mocked at its subjects. The series does neither, making for a portrait of advantaged millennial existence that’s frank about the mess and the glamour.
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 comments. “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
