{"id":365330,"date":"2025-12-23T10:13:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T10:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/365330\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T10:13:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T10:13:12","slug":"rachel-sennott-interview-directing-the-i-love-la-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/365330\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Sennott Interview \u2014 Directing the ‘I Love LA’ Finale"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nothing good happens on the F train. Usually, anyway. Showrunner and star of \u201cI Love LA<\/a>\u201d Rachel Sennott<\/a> always knew that the end of the first season of the show would have to travel back to the East Coast, so that the core ensemble of Maya (Sennott), Tallulah (Odessa A\u2019zion<\/a>), Alani (True Whitaker), and Charlie (Jordan Firstman) could all face down some demons, make some big choices and\/or mistakes to propel them into the next stage of their lives and, as so happens on the subway, get over New York and long to return to LA.<\/p>\n

Logistically, the HBO comedy\u2019s shooting schedule worked out so that Sennott could also direct Episode 8, \u201cI Love NY,\u201d but the scaled-up looks of the episode, and the big emotional payoffs, were ambitious challenges for her to take on. \u201cIt was kind of crazy that that\u2019s the one that I did \u2014 10 locations, shooting in New York for two days, with a new crew. It was a lot,\u201d Sennott told IndieWire on a recent episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"AVATAR:<\/a> \"THE<\/a> <\/p>\n

But the finale was also very personal to Sennott. In some ways, no one was better placed to direct it. \u201cThe finale was sort of like a culmination of certain things I felt and experienced around the time when the show itself was getting picked up,\u201d Sennott said. \u201cI always knew that I wanted \u200athe season to end with the girls returning to New York. It feels like New York is the ex-boyfriend. That [place is] their demons. I want them to go home and face their demons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout \u201cI Love LA,\u201d Sennott and the show\u2019s writing team balanced her overall sense of the story with designing really satisfying episodic payoffs. Initially, Tallulah\u2019s nemesis Paulena (Annalisa Cochrane) was designed to be a looming threat throughout the season, who we would only meet in New York, but the show moved her up all the way to Episode 2. <\/p>\n

But every narrative arc \u2014 from Charlie\u2019s simmering loneliness to Alani\u2019s relationship with her parents, to Maya\u2019s temptation to fall back into the orbit of her old boss (Colin Woodell) and Tallulah\u2019s anxiety about taking the next step into fame \u2014 was designed to culminate in New York. It was designed, also, for Maya and Tallulah to make one more scrappy choice together, and to move one step closer toward tunnels between their mansions.<\/p>\n

Sennott, as a director, balances catching those emotional payoffs and giving them their due with a playful use of space \u2014 it is always a bit of a jolt to see an old ex, after all. She brought a balance of approaches to shooting the finale, too. <\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I got to steal a little something from everyone and get advice from people,\u201d Sennott said. \u201cLorene [Scafaria], who\u2019s a genius and one of our directors \u2014 the pilot and then [Episodes] 6 and 7 \u2014 she gave me advice on shot listing. I got to see the way Emma Seligman<\/a> shotlisted, both with \u2018Shiva Baby\u2019 and \u2018Bottoms.\u2019 She built like a LEGO set of the set and then would move people around for blocking, which was really cool. And we had the sets built so I could go in there and walk around and [figure out] the drone, the crane shot. Halina Reijn, who I love so much for \u2018Bodies Bodies Bodies,\u2019 when she was directing, it\u2019s almost like she was in the scene with the actors. So that was a really helpful tactic as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Rachel\u2018I Love LA\u2019Kenny Laubbacher\/HBO<\/p>\n

But some of Sennott\u2019s favorite work in the \u201cI Love LA\u201d finale<\/a>, and across the season, is work she did in post \u2014\u00a0specifically finding songs for the button of each episode with music supervisor Ian Broucek. \u201cMy favorite part of any movie ever is the needle drop at the end, at the credits, because that\u2019s when you really cement the feeling of what the movie\u2019s supposed to make you feel. And if you pick the wrong song for the credits, or if you end the movie at the wrong time, you can fuck up the whole thing,\u201d Sennott said. \u201cThat moment really nails and solidifies how the movie\u2019s supposed to make you feel, and in TV<\/a>, you get to do that every single week. It\u2019s such a rush. I feel like I got such a high off of getting to feel that feeling and leave the audience with a feeling every episode.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI Love LA\u201d ends by pairing a slightly-grody, very tight, and often-inconvenient view of Lower Manhattan with The Cranberries\u2019 \u201cDreams.\u201d It is as succinct a way as any to sum up who these characters are, how close they are to the people they want to be, and how much Sennott and the show can still do with them. \u201c\u200aWe have some episodes that are really, like, silly and wild and fun. But we have some episodes that I think are a little more dramatic, a little more real, and getting to leave people with different feelings every episode is really cool,\u201d Sennott said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI Love LA\u201d Season 1 is now streaming on HBO.<\/p>\n

To hear the entire conversation with Rachel Sennot and make sure you don\u2019t miss a single episode of Filmmaker Toolkit, subscribe to the podcast on\u00a0Apple<\/a>,\u00a0Spotify<\/a>, or your favorite podcast platform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nothing good happens on the F train. Usually, anyway. Showrunner and star of \u201cI Love LA\u201d Rachel Sennott…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":365331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88,23575,76711,46919,61451,92],"class_list":["post-365330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-filmmaker-toolkit-podcast","tag-i-love-la","tag-rachel-sennott","tag-top-of-the-line","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/365331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}