SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the second episode of HBO‘s I Love L.A.
Ayo Edebiri, what are you doing here?!
The second episode of HBO’s I Love LA gave viewers a fun surprise on Sunday night with an appearance from creator Rachel Sennott‘s friend and fellow writer/actor playing a delusional British pop star.
“I always want my friends in stuff so that I can hang out with them,” Sennott tells Deadline about including her Bottoms co-star in the series. “I’m like, ‘If you come shoot for two days, then we can have dinner,’ because she’s so busy all the time. I just love her. She’s so talented, so funny, so skilled as an actress, too.”
Edebiri plays Charlie’s (Jordan Firstman) client Mimi Rush, a British pop star who is more than a little disconnected from reality. Her plot in the episode revolves around her attempt to get Zendaya to star as her mom in her new music video, but when the A-lister doesn’t engage, Mimi’s team is sent scrambling to find reasons why nobody would want to work with Zendaya in the first place.
“She’s flaky, she’s in, she’s out, she isn’t kind of there for people…people want her to be there, but she’s often elsewhere,” Charlie rambles as he wracks his brain for a way to soothe Mimi’s aggravation, promising to circle back with more dirt on Zendaya, adding: “It is important to me. I want you to feel that she is a bad person.”
The grasping for straws was all for naught, though, because Zendaya actually does eventually agree to be in Mimi’s video. Imagine Charlie’s surprise when his recon mission to get dirt on the Dune actress actually gets him fired for “talking sh*t” around town about Mimi’s “best friend,” Zendaya.
Hollywood is fickle like that.
The idea for the character was a collaborative effort, according to Sennott, who said she and her showrunning partner Emma Barrie “basically got on the phone and jammed with her and just sort of pitched the idea…to make this ridiculous, fun character together.”
The accent was all Edebiri, they add.
“It’s unlike anything she’s done in a while. So absurd. And she was like, ‘I love it. Can I be British?’” Barrie said, after which Sennott chimes in: “We were like, ‘If you want to be British, you can be British.’”
I Love LA airs Sunday nights at 10:30 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and lands on HBO Max at 10:30 p.m. ET.
