Rachel Sennott’s “I Love LA” earned comparisons to “Girls” from the moment it premiered last November. Like Lena Dunham’s landmark series, it is an HBO comedy from a buzzy writer-performer about twenty-somethings navigating love and codependent friendships in a major metropolitan city. The characters can be frustrating, and they’re supposed to be.
For Sennott, the comparison is an honor — and yet it fails to convey the entirety of what “I Love LA” offers. Much of the series focuses on the business of entertainment, such that the shenanigans of ambitious talent agent Maia (Sennott) and her influencer frenemy-turned-client Tallulah (Odessa A’zion) suggest Vincent Chase more than they do Hannah Horvath.
“I feel so lucky to have come up in the industry with my friends,” Sennott said. “When I’m with them, I feel invincible and have the best time ever. And that’s the ‘Entourage’ feeling.”
Maia and her friends go to a party at Elijah Wood’s house. They befriend up-and-coming TikTok stars. They book and lose brand deals over social-media scandals. “I Love LA” embraces the specificity of its imagined world, inviting the audience to experience what it’s like to try to make it in the entertainment and fashion industries at this particular moment.
“In the process of making this show, I fell in love with L.A.,” said Sennott, who was born and raised in Connecticut. Her castmate True Whitaker, a self-described “nepo baby” (her dad is Forest) who plays Maia’s friend Alani, added that Sennott is “able to capture some of the bizarre situations that happen in L.A. between transplants and the people who are raised there.
“It can give documentary (vibes) at times,” Whitaker continued. “You don’t think it’s going to be this crazy and wacky, but these are pulled from real-life experiences.”
Sennott began doing stand-up as a student at New York University and amassed an online following after going viral seven years ago for a video mocking the trailers of films set in Los Angeles. “Come on, it’s L.A.,” she says in the 18-second clip while twirling in circles. “I’m addicted to drugs. We all are. If you don’t have an eating disorder, get one, bitch.” She broke out as an actress with the lead role in 2020’s “Shiva Baby,” an anxiety-ridden comedy directed by her NYU classmate Emma Seligman (with whom Sennott co-wrote the 2023 film “Bottoms,” co-starring another good friend, Ayo Edebiri).
“I Love LA” is the latest of Sennott’s works to capitalize on her keen understanding of what makes young millennials and older Gen Z-ers tick. (At 30, she is on the cusp.) “It’s funny because I’m a little bit Maia and I’m a little bit Tallulah,” Sennott said.
The series premiere finds Tallulah arriving in Los Angeles from New York, where she rapidly rose to fame online; Maia mocks Tallulah in conversations with her sweet schoolteacher boyfriend, Dylan (Josh Hutcherson), who comes to realize Maia’s derision is fueled by jealousy. She wishes she’d found success as quickly as her friend. At the same time, Talullah knows she cannot keep her career afloat without Maia’s business acumen.
This isn’t the show Sennott originally set out to pitch. One of the ideas she presented to HBO executives at a general meeting was about a girl who fixed ATMs, which Sennott did when she was in college. But as she grew more comfortable in the conversation, she pivoted to her personal life.
Her group of friends, once tight-knit, had been changing: “Some people move, some people start becoming successful while others are still a barista or whatever,” she said. “I felt this thing in my friend group where everyone was pulling off in different directions.”
Sennott heard from her agent about an hour later. “She’s like, ‘HBO wants to make the show.’ And I’m like, ‘What show?’” she said. This was just before the 2023 writers’ strike, when Sennott spent months frozen in rumination on what her personal musings could become on screen.
It took some time for the writers (including co-showrunner Emma Barrie) to figure it out. “I think we found our tone in Episode 5,” Sennott said, referring to one that carefully balances Maia’s more outlandish antics with the withering of her relationship with Dylan. The couple struggle to make it work in the latter half of the season, as Maia increasingly prioritizes her career over him.
Next season, Sennott hopes to dig even deeper. Exploring these dilemmas just felt right. “That’s when I walked away being like, ‘That’s the show,’” Sennott said.
This story first ran in the Comedy Series issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
