Note: This story contains spoilers from “I Love LA” Season 1, Episode 2.
Although Josh Hutcherson came on board Rachel Sennott’s “I Love LA” rather late in the game in a recasting after the initial pilot for the HBO comedy was filmed, there was still plenty of space for Hutcherson to help mold his character, who plays the longterm, live-in partner of Sennott’s Maia, with Sennott and co-showrunner Emma Barrie.
“We very quickly all got on the same page, which was we didn’t want Dylan to just be the square, the boring, nothing guy,” Hutcherson told TheWrap. “We wanted to find some textures to him that felt funny and dynamic and different, rather than something that we’ve seen before.”
As they built out Hutcherson’s take on Dylan, which shifted from initial conceptions of the role played by Miles Robbins (“Blockers,” “Old Dads”) in the pilot, the group pondered who Dylan was at his core, his desires and why he was with Maia in a process that Hutcherson said developed the character further than what was on the page.
“One thing that Rachel and Emma and all the writers have really done a great job of throughout the whole series was leaning into each of the actors own vibes and strengths, and seeing what works for them, and then going deeper into that, into that world,” Hutcherson said. “They’re such a collaborative team across the board.”
For Hutcherson, whose career has recently taken him further into the action, thriller and horror genres with “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” “Long Gone Heroes” and “The Beekeeper,” he was “over the moon” when he got the call for the recasting.
“I’ve always dreamt of being on a show like this — something that is grounded, that has amazing writing with an amazing cast, where everyone’s so funny, lot of room to improvise, and getting to do it for HBO is just a really cool combination of things that I’ve always dreamt of doing,” he said.
Dylan, Hutcherson’s character in “I Love LA,” is certainly a departure from the actor’s past roles, which he notes have seen him “surviving crazy environments,” and feels more grounded than his sitcom “Future Man,” which embodied a more “neurotic, crazy over-the-top” tone.
“There was something about Dylan that feels very like grounded in reality,” Hutcherson said. “[There’s] not a lot of overlap with a lot of the characters I’ve gotten to play, which is amazing for me, to get to step into something that’s pretty
different.”
Hutcherson’s comedy skills are on display in Episode 2, when Maia’s recently reunited bestie Tallulah (Odessa A’zion) invites over a nutty acquaintance, who blackmails Maia and Dylan into snorting an ungodly amount of cocaine. As Maia and Tallulah cook up a plan to get the acquaintance out, Maia pretends to throw a jealous fit at Dylan, who is in over his dead at the dramatics happening before him.
“That sequence in Episode 2 was amazing, because the way that it was blocked was this slaps-sticky, schadenfreude a thing of running from room to room, and very like frenetic and almost like a little play in a way,” Hutcherson said. “Dylan is just out of his depth — he doesn’t know how to handle any of this and trying to be there for his girlfriend, but also just doesn’t get what the hell is going on, which I relate to.”
That same scenario — Dylan being way out of is depth with Maia and her friends — is explored further throughout the eight-episode season, with Hutcherson noting “as Maia gets deeper and deeper into the world of becoming this manager dream role that she’s always wanted to have, maybe the further away she gets from her home with Dylan.” The strain prompts Dylan to ponder “are they growing apart, or is this just how it is now?” according to Hutcherson.
“In any relationship, when someone’s going through a big change moment, it’s complicated, and you have to figure out, ‘do I like who this new person is? Do I work with this new person?’” Hutcherson said. “The show poses a lot of those questions in fun ways as the season develops.”
“I Love LA” premieres Sundays at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max.
