In the opening scene of Rachel Sennott’s new HBO series I Love LA, her character, an aspiring talent manager named Maia, starts her birthday with a bang. Literally. She’s having mid–birthday sex with her boyfriend (played by Josh Hutcherson) when the bed begins to shake—from an earthquake.
“We were either going to do an earthquake during acupuncture or sex,” says Sennott. “And we landed on sex.”
Sennott serves as creator, executive producer, and star of I Love LA, even directing the season finale. And last night, the show premiered at Paramount Studios, under the iconic water tower, to a packed crowd that proved L.A. definitely loves her back. You couldn’t throw one of the specially branded Randy’s Donuts without hitting a celebrity—Selena Gomez and husband Benny Blanco, Charli xcx, Quenlin Blackwell, Cara Delevingne, Maude Apatow, Myha’la Herrold, Meg Stalter, and Emma Chamberlain were all in attendance. Guests snapped photos in front of one of Echo Park Lake’s famous swan boats (in a promo image for the show, Sennott poses atop one plunging backward into the water, swan neck skyward) and drank cocktails with the show’s name carved into the ice.
In an interview at the glamorous, balloon and skinny cigarette-laden after-party at Bar Marmont, Sennott, wearing a sheer black Ludovic Saint Sernin gown, laughed about not always loving the city she now calls home. “When I first moved here, it was a disaster,” she says. “It was like, first weekend: car accident, rental car, no insurance, total nightmare.”
She felt the Earth move soon after. “I had moved into my studio apartment in North Hollywood, and I was like one or two weeks in. There was an earthquake at night, and I was like, I don’t even know who to text.”
These early experiences were good fodder for the show, which centers on Maia’s attempts to manage the career of her college frenemy, an aspiring influencer (played by Odessa A’zion). The cast includes True Whitaker (Forest’s daughter), doing an inspired parody of a nepo baby; Sennott’s friend of a decade, Jordan Firstman, whom she met doing karaoke with Ayo Edebiri; and Leighton Meester as Sennott’s boss. Sennott is a self-professed Meester superfan. Growing up, she wasn’t allowed to watch Gossip Girl but would secretly watch it on her dad’s Netflix account. “I was like, it’ll just look like my dad is watching Gossip Girl, which is so weird. My parents were like, You’re watching Gossip Girl, bitch.”
Sennott’s association with Los Angeles started long before she made the move from New York, thanks to a viral video in which she spins in a crop top to Azealia Banks’s “212,” a manic look in her eye. “It’s L.A.!” she exclaims.” I’m addicted to drugs. We all are. If you don’t have an eating disorder, get one, bitch!”
“I made that video when I had come here a couple times and I felt out of my depth. I was sort of laughing at the absurdity of it all,” she says. “But now that I live here, I love it so much, so genuinely. I think that was the beginning of my journey, but now I’m like, I do actually love L.A.”
There are winking references to transplant life in L.A. throughout the series—the audience at the premiere whooped at jokes about Erewhon and the infamous nightclub Tenants of the Trees. But you don’t have to have sampled a Hailey Bieber smoothie to enjoy the show. “I want to take people on a fun ride,” says Sennott. “I want them to cry, laugh, maybe get a little horny. The three emotions!”
Below, an exclusive look inside the event:
Charli xcx
Leighton Meester
Odessa A’zion and Rachel Sennott
Adela
Alex Consani and Quenlin Blackwell
Odessa A’zion
True Whitaker
Josh Hutcherson
Emma Chamberlain
Odessa A’zion
Rachel Sennott, Josh Hutcherson and Jordan Firstman
Source: W Magazine