In his comedy about Generation Z I love Los Angeles, Rachel Sennott lovingly holding up a mirror to the city's 20-year-old transplant surgeons. Much like the city itself, there's a lot to love about the latest generation of young people being chewed up and spat out in Los Angeles, even if they might be working on some things, too.
“I obviously didn’t want to take myself too seriously,” Sennott admits. However, there were many clear obstacles that her generation faced coming of age, and she wanted to be honest about them.
“It’s tough,” she says of the obstacles facing Gen Z. For the record, Sennott considers herself a “millennial,” adding that the challenges are greater for those a few years younger than her.
“Especially when I look at my younger brothers and sisters,” she continued. “One of my sisters went to college for one year, then had to move home because of COVID. My other sister is in high school on Zoom… then the strikes started. The government didn't…” she pauses here for a moment “The job market, all of this, it's just difficult. We can't achieve what our parents had at that age. It feels like nothing you do is ever enough. There's too much information on our phones.” [There’s] images in my head that I will never delete…”
She falls silent. In other words, the list goes on.
The last decade has proven to be quite a turbulent coming of age, Sennott argues, giving her characters a different perspective on this universal period of life.
Sennott executive produces and co-hosts the show with Emma Barry, a self-described “older millennial” who says the pair were set up on a “blind date.” HBObut “it was love at first sight because we hit it off very quickly.”
When she says this, Sennott agrees: “We were just vibrating.”
The two new showrunners combine Sennott's perspective on the coming-of-age internet generation with Barry's experience in the writers' room, including on the HBO series. Barryto get the series off the ground.
“Rachel was my window into the generation younger than me that, we all went through COVID, but she went through COVID in a way that was much more detrimental to her build in her career, and she missed out on years where she could actually get laid and feel it. This is a generation that should be taken very seriously. They are often made fun of by people who don't understand them,” Barry said.
Join the group of friends in the center I love Los Angeleswhich, according to Sennott, “represent different reactions to what a generation has gone through.”
There's her character Maya, a successful perfectionist who struggles to advance in her career despite few connections, and a boss who doesn't particularly care about her career advancement. “She was like, 'I'll get my last job on the Titanic when it sinks,'” Sennott muses.
Then there's Tallulah, who Sennott says is “a little more of a nihilist.” She's a powerful person who marches to the beat of her own drum and doesn't seem too concerned about societal standards for success. Then there's Alani (True Whitaker), an unaffected Nepo kid who just wants everyone to get along, and Charlie (Jordan Firstman), an aspiring designer who forges his own path after deciding the traditional routes aren't for him.
The counterpoint to all these characters is Josh Hutcherson as Maya's boyfriend Dylan. He is a teacher who is slightly older than Maya and her friends and at times seems completely out of touch with their version of reality.
“I think Dylan could have been more condescending… but Josh just brought an art to it. He fits so well with the rest of the cast and it feels like he's living in a different world a little bit, but he never makes fun of that other world,” Barry said.
Agreeing, Sennott says the point of creating a central group of friends was to have “all these different perspectives and reactions to being at this age right now and not judge any of them as the right or wrong way to do it.”
“There's humor and comedy, but I also think I didn't want to feel like we were making fun of our characters before we met them,” she continued. “We wanted to look at the characters with empathy.”
The show, which Sennott bills as “Entourage for Internet Girls” is also a little more self-reflective than it might seem at first glance. I love Los Angeles it's all about the duality of the eponymous town and its young people, but when it came to creating the show, Sennott applied the same type of reflection within himself.
“I think part of it was through my Saturn Return, and I feel like that's happening—my 20s were really chaotic. When I was in my 20s, I thought, “Okay, I'm locking myself away. I know my life. I finished”. And then when I turned 20, I felt like this early version of myself had emerged. [out] and the situation became chaotic again, which was scary, but good,” she noted.
“In a way, Tallulah almost represents me when I was younger, me when I lived in New York, and Maya is like me where I was a couple of years ago, which is like the most anxious, control-freak personality. [person]“The point is that Maya and Tallulah are better together. I think that [was a] a period where everything is shaken up again, but everything is for the better… I think around the age of 20, everyone kind of chooses their own path, and it's a little scary. You're like, “Wait guys, what are we doing?” and something like that [are] feeling a little isolated or scared. And I think that’s important too.”
I love Los Angeles It premiered Sunday night on HBO. New episodes air Sundays at 10:30pm ET/PT on HBO and HBO Max.
