After that Season 1 finale of I Love LA, Josh Hutcherson is preparing for the internet backlash.
**Spoilers ahead for the Season 1 finale of I Love LA, now streaming on HBO Max**
Nearly every woman has had the experience of worrying their partner might cheat on them with someone their significant other has told them explicitly not to worry about. Often, it comes to be that is exactly who you should be worrying about. It’s a situation so universal, in fact, that Rachel Sennott opted to write it into I Love LA, having the final moments of Episode 8, “I Love NY,” see Dylan (Hutcherson) turning over in a bed with Claire (Callie Hernandez), one of Dylan’s coworkers.
“My reaction to reading it was ‘No, Dylan, buddy, not Claire. I get it, but not Claire,’” Hutcherson told DECIDER in an interview, adding that the moment was so hard to stomach he was actively stressed about filming the scene. That anxiety was only made worse after attending the table read, where his costars did not take Dylan’s betrayal well. “Funny enough, when we did the table read and it got to the point where — you know, they have like 30 people there, all the cast and everything — [the script says] ‘Dylan wakes up and Claire is next to him,’ they actively booed me. Me. I was like, I’m Josh, I didn’t write this.’”
He added, ” I got home and my girlfriend was like, ‘You seem a little off.’ I was like, ‘I got booed at the table read.’ It felt really not great.”
The reaction is appropriate for those who remember Episode 6, when Maia comes home to their apartment to find Dylan’s coworkers over for a game night. Maia quickly singles out Claire as a potential threat and, being heavily under the influence, throws the entire gathering into awkwardness and chaos. Not only does she inappropriately try to seduce Dylan mid-party, she confronts Claire about having the hots for her boyfriend.
At that time, Claire swears up and down that she and Dylan are just friends and that she has never and would never go after him like that. Cut ahead several episodes later as Dylan and Claire lie in a bed together after Dylan and Maia make up following their brief tiff and separation. While they may have been separated after a big blowup in Episode 7, it’s still not a good look for Hutcherson’s character and it’s one that took some time to come around to.
“I had a lot of conversations with Rachel and Emma [Seligman] about it to understand it. It was really important to me, how that moment was portrayed, because it’s pretty hardcore in a lot of ways,” Hutcherson explained. “How Dylan arrives to that state, I think, is important, as well. But I’m really happy with how it turned out. Maia is on her journey and screwing things up in her own way and Dylan is doing the same thing.”
“It all, I think, comes from a lack of them communicating with one another and we’ll see what happens after. But they’re going to be very angry, the people of the internet,” he explained.
As for whether or not Dylan fesses up or keeps his infidelity (can we even call it that if they were essentially on a break?) under wraps is a question that will have to be answered in Season 2.
I Love LA Season 1 is now streaming on HBO Max.
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