![‘Miss You, Love You’: Jim Rash, Allison Janney & Andrew Rannells On Grief, New Mexico & Barry White [Interview]](https://cdn.theplaylist.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/22135736/andrew-rannells-allison-janney.jpg "‘Miss You, Love You’: Jim Rash, Allison Janney & Andrew Rannells On Grief, New Mexico & Barry White [Interview]")
It’s not every day that an actor campaigns for an Emmy nominee they aren’t explicitly nominated for. For both Andrew Rannells and Allison Janney, their admiration for Jim Rash’s “Miss You, Love You” is worth the time and effort. An indie film that took a year to get in front of cameras and then another year before HBO picked it up after market screenings at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. A few months later, it was honored as a nominee for Outstanding Movie, and Rannells is immensely proud of his collaborator’s achievements.
“I have never been offered a role like this,” Rannells says. “I was like, ‘I’ve never had this many lines before.’ And Allison was like, ‘Me neither.’ But it felt like such a gift and also a huge responsibility to tell the story. Jim Rash wrote this really beautiful and complex and detailed script that was so funny, but also really heartbreaking. And the first time Allison and I read it together, we just did a little table read before everything was really moving, and I was like, ‘God, I hope this happens. I really hope we get to do this.’ And then a year later or something, we were filming it. And then a year after that, we found a home on HBO, which was so exciting and such a gift because we weren’t sure exactly where it was going to land.”
Rannells adds, “Putting a movie like this into movie theaters right now seemed a little tricky. Would it get lost and would anyone watch it? And then when we got the call that HBO believed in it and loved it and wanted to give it space, Allison and I were thrilled, thrilled.”
Essentially a two-hander, “Miss You” centers on Diane Peterson (Janey), a retiree who is trying to cope with the death of her second husband. Her globe-trotting son is a no-show for the funeral and, instead, has sent his friend and assistant, Jamie Simms (Rannells), in his stead. The two have never met. In fact, Diane is completely unaware of his existence, but they are connected by an estranged son and a boss who means more to Jamie than he should. Rannells reveals the first full scene in the movie turned out to be 25 pages of dialogue for the two Broadway veterans to unpack.
“Allison and I sort of made a pact that we were going to learn the entire script. We were going to be off book day one,” Rannells reveals. “So we learned it like a play, and we showed up in Albuquerque to start filming, and we had, I think, three days of rehearsal where we got to just rehearse in the house, which was great. And Danny Moder, our DP, was there with us, and he was blocking things and figuring out how he could best catch these moments. It was a very tight schedule of 17 days that we had to film it, but we also had this time at the beginning to work through this. And then Allison and I just got to run it a bunch.”
Rannells says the second he read the script, he knew exactly who Jamie was.
“It was described that he lives in Los Angeles on the east side of Los Angeles, Los Feliz, Silver Lake,” Rannells says. “He comes out a little later than most people. So, I was like, ‘O.K., I understand that a little bit.’ Even though it was very different from my own experience. And then working with the costume designer, I was like, I think that he cares what he looks like, but not that much. There’s a scene where I’m shirtless, and I was like, ‘I’m not going to sweat about this and be doing pushups off camera to do this’. I was like, ‘He’s just a guy who’s just living his life.’ So, I felt like he doesn’t have a lot of vanity to him, so that was a nice entry point.”
He adds, “I just sort of dove in. And same with Allison. I think that when we showed up on set, and she had her little [hair] bob and her little outfit, and I was like, ‘I know who that lady is. I know who she is.’
Was that wig, which has a life of its own in the film, in the original script?
“No,” Rannells replies, smiling. “The bob was not in the script. It might’ve been an Allison choice, but it was the correct choice.”
It was indeed.
In a film full of intense back-and-forth scenes between Rannells and Janney, it was a post-funeral moment that the actor was most focused on. A sequence in the movie when Jamie reveals his true plans and why stopping in New Mexico wasn’t actually an out-of-the-way excursion. A moment where Jamie explains how he’s “having a hard time moving forward” with his life.
“It’s a really beautiful monologue that Jim has written. And it was one that from the second I read it, I couldn’t do it without crying. I just couldn’t,” Rannells reveals. “Something about it just cut straight to the center of me. So, that day I was pretty nervous about doing that scene. And we had to do it many, many times from many angles. But Allison was so kind and so generous and so present. And every time we did it, she was just right there with me, and it made it so easy. But it was a hard day to film it, but also really satisfying because it felt like this is the thesis of this character. That was the moment I knew I had to really land. So, there’s some pressure there. But when I looked at Allison, I was like, ‘I think it’s all going to be O.K.'”
By the time you read this, Rannells will have begun production opposite Da’Vine Joy Randolph on another independent film, “Dedicated to Morris Burke,” but it won’t be the sort of center stage spotlight that “Miss You” provided him. He’s very well aware how rare these opportunities currently are. At least, for now.
“I haven’t gotten to act like this on film very often or at all, really,” Rannells says. “On stage, yes, I’ve been given large roles and a lot of responsibility for storytelling, but on film, it’s supporting parts. So, to get to be in the center of a story like this, especially opposite Allison, that’s a huge deal for me as an actor. That I was trusted with this story. So, when other actor friends of mine see it, they’re just happy that I have this opportunity. That means a lot to me.”
“Miss You, Love You” is available on HBO Max
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Editor-at-Large Gregory Ellwood is one of the entertainment industry's most respected journalists and critics. Based in Los Angeles, he's the only current awards expert who previously worked on Oscar campaigns at a major movie studio. Over the years, he has written for the LA Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Vox, among others. He also co-founded the entertainment news site HitFix, which spawned a legion of influential Emmy and WGA Award-winning alumni.
