There have been endless Hollywood projects made about the city of Los Angeles, but new HBO comedy series I Love LA spotlights two very important things: the Silver Lake Reservoir and Erewhon.
“I love to walk the res and yap with my girls, so to get that into the pilot was awesome,” creator and star Rachel Sennott explained at the show‘s premiere on Tuesday. “And Erewhon is featured, which no one has shot in Erewhon before, brag. We’re the first to shoot in Erewhon.”
These L.A. staples are just two of the many landmarks featured in the series, which follows a tight-knit friend group reuniting in the city after years apart. Odessa A’zion, Jordan Firstman, True Whitaker, Josh Hutcherson and Leighton Meester co-star.
“It started from me moving to L.A. during COVID, feeling very isolated, going through my Saturn return; I think in your early 20s, you and your friend group are all together-together, and then people start going off on side quests and you’re like, ‘Where are you guys going?’” Sennott told The Hollywood Reporter. “I was like, ‘I need everyone to be here with me, please don’t leave.’ And I think those feelings of vulnerability, loneliness, gripping onto my friends — that was the inspo, that was the jumping off place.”
She pointed to Entourage as “a big reference” when writing the show, saying, “we were talking about this show as Entourage for internet it girls.” Hutcherson added that the Adrian Grenier-led series “captured a side of L.A. in a very authentic way, and I think there’s some echoes of that in our world as well.”
Hutcherson — who also celebrated the reservoir’s depiction because “I run around it all the time, so to see that in a beautifully shot way it was like you see, concrete and barbed wire can be beautiful!” — said he fell in love with the script immediately and was a quick yes to play Sennott’s boyfriend in the show. “I’ve been a fan of Rachel’s for so long and she just brought it all on this,” he said. “It’s rare that I read something and I’m constantly laughing while reading, and this definitely did that.”
Meester, fresh off of her appearance in Nobody Wants This, plays Sennott’s boss, joking, “The character breakdown was a woman in her 40s who chews loudly and coughs while talking on the phone, and I thought, that’s my dream role.”
I Love LA premieres Sunday on HBO.
