Just like Dante Hicks, Rachel Sennott didn’t expect to be here today. Three years ago, the writer and actress and 2020s heir to the 1990s slacker comedy boom — let the generational record show that she was born one year after Clerks opened its doors — walked into a general meeting with HBO and walked out having sold…. something?
“My agent called me and said, ‘You’ve sold them an idea,'” Sennott tells Gold Derby with a laugh. “Before I went in, she had told me ‘Don’t hard pitch anything, they just want to get to know you.’ And then I totally hard pitched them all these things!”
As she had been forewarned, the HBO executives weren’t interested in those initial pitches. But they were interested in getting to know Sennott and gently guided her out of selling mode and into what she calls a “flowing conversation,” about her life as a recent New York to Los Angeles transplant.
“When I left the meeting, I thought, ‘Did I share too much of my personal life?'” Sennott recalls. That feeling only intensified after she learned she had sold an idea in the room, and the onset of the 2023 writer’s strike meant that she couldn’t ask HBO to elaborate on what that idea was.
“My fear was, ‘What did I say in meeting?!'” she confesses. “But once the strike ended, I was able to meet with them again and we started talking different kinds of characters and things we wanted to see.” Slowly, but surely what had been a vague idea began to take shape as a concrete half-hour comedy, one that Sennott eventually titled, I Love L.A.
Since premiering on HBO in November, the series has been praised for snapshotting the growing pains of Gen Z as that cohort enters early adulthood. Balancing radical empathy with knowing exaggeration, Sennott and her writing team ably laugh at and laugh along with the exploits of her alter ego, Maia, and a squad of friends navigating a version of la la land where success seems increasingly ephemeral and even deep personal relationships can turn transactional.
Earlier this month, Sennott and her costar Odessa A’zion were on hand to accept the statuette for Breakthrough Comedy Series at the 2026 Gotham TV Awards — an early stop on the road to Emmy night. In a thoughtful interview, Sennott shared her specific approach to cringe comedy, and what to expect from Season 2, which is working its way through the writers’ room right now.
Gold Derby: This is a two-part question — what was the first story idea you had where you said, “Oh, this is what the show could be”?
Rachel Sennott: The idea of two best friends who have grown apart and then reunite. That’s something I thought a lot about in my own life. In my early 20s, you’re with all your friends and everyone feels like part of the group. Then starting around 26 or 27, you grow apart in different ways and split off into your bubbles. For a really long time, I had this idea in my head of what my life was supposed to be, and then everything went down this other path. So the idea of two friends reconnecting — like Maia and Tallulah (played by A’zion) do on the show — was there from the beginning.
And now Part 2 — what was the episode you broke where you said, “Oh, this is what the show is?”
Ooh, I’m gonna say that I only realized what the show is in the editing room. Which is a little late, but hey, I’m going to be real! [Laughs] You know, it’s sometimes hard to tell the tone of what something is when you’re making it. You can describe the tone, but you really only find it when you’re editing and making tweaks, deciding which jokes to cut and which to keep. To me, the sixth episode, “Game Night,” is what the show is really about. Both in terms of how it handles the hyper-specifics of the internet as an industry and influencer culture, as well as the comedy I lean towards, which is relationship dynamics. That episode is the one where we were really getting to sink our teeth into that kind of feeling.
That’s the one I would have called out, too. That’s where I recognized a lot of the cringe comedy that you were playing with in your movies like Shiva Baby and Bottoms.
Yeah, I like leaning into discomfort. Pushing boundaries isn’t really the right word, because I’m not ever really doing anything to shock you. In real life, I would obviously stop myself from doing something like Maia does in “Game Night,” but that instinct to let my inner thoughts loose is always there, so letting myself do it in my work is really freeing and fun for me.
From the beginning of my career, I’ve gotten to play or write characters that are definitely not on paper perfect or even likable. There are always people who relate to that because humans are flawed and we do that. For Season 2, we’ve been talking a lot about what we feel we can and can’t get away with for her and all the characters, but I think we also have a moral code for her, so I’m not afraid of misstepping.
One other theme that connects Shiva Baby to I Love L.A. is your character’s power and agency when it comes to sex. The finale in particular plays with that in a complicated way, putting Maia in an uncomfortable situation, but never shaming her for being there. How far did you feel you could take that scene?
I wanted Maya to go into that scene feeling like she had power and then lose that power, but I also didn’t want it to feel like it was a decision that made her feel gross or became something she regretted. We kept it in the gray area, not going too far one way or the other. I feel like the end of the scene where she’s looking at herself in the mirror and being like, “What am I doing?” That’s the important moment to sell her feelings and be in her head.
That was my first time directing and being in that kind of scene at the same time. But [my scene partner] Colin Woodell is such an amazing actor, and we had built up trust and comfortability at that point. But it was funny, too, because I would be doing these close shots with him where I’d be on the other side of the camera going, “Okay, now spit!” It was a hilarious day of work at the office.
What are some of the touchstone pieces of media that informed your approach to writing about sex?
The first season of The Girlfriend Experience was such a great show, and I thought sex was depicted in such a real way there. The movie American Honey as well — I remember seeing some of those scenes and feeling they got it right. On a totally different end of the spectrum, I remember watching Gossip Girl and being scandalized by the sex in that show, but also loving it. I remember wanting stuff that felt sexy and fun even if it’s bad — like reading Twilight and getting horny, that kind of thing. [Laughs]
I remember that movies like The 40-Year-Old-Virgin would depict sex very comedically, but always from a male perspective. For me, sex is both comedic and also the quickest way to tell what’s really going on in a couple’s relationship, which is really fun. In our original pilot, we shot a whole scene where Maia is leaving for work and her boyfriend Dylan (played by Josh Hutcherson) is following around the apartment and he’s really hard, but she’s too focused on getting out the door. We didn’t end up using it, but it immediately set up where that couple is in their relationship.
There’s a version of this show that could have been another Entourage, but you use celebrity cameos very sparingly. The Elijah Wood appearance in the fourth episode is a standout moment, though. How did that come about?
We knew we needed someone who was famous, but isn’t a creep in real life so that he can play this kooky version of himself and have it feel fun, as opposed to scary or dangerous. Elijah was our jumping off point for casting, and he was the first person I Zoomed with. I pitched it to him and he said, “It sounds insane — send me the pages.” After he read it, he was game. If you look at his filmography, he’s obviously done all these huge movies, but he also does indies and weird stuff, too, so he’s always down to try things. And it was fun to pair this movie star guy with an influencer in that storyline; it was a really great dynamic to explore.
What’s the biggest lesson you learned making Season 1 of I Love L.A. that you know you’ll apply to Season 2?
Don’t try to overcram the scripts! [Laughs] It’s better when you get to breath in a scene. There were a lot of scenes that we had to cut from our episodes because there was so much we were trying to fit in. You can see that shift in the fifth episode where we get to stay with one story for a longer time instead of jumping around. That episode breathes in a different way than the previous ones, and we got to play around with the character’s dynamics and weird conversations. But I do sometimes feel like I’m in the writer’s room, going: “And then they do this! And then they do this! And then they go to Disneyland!” And the writers have to tell me, “Okay, you just wrote five episodes. We can do one or two of those things.” [Laughs]
