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By
Arielle Port
Published 23 minutes ago
Arielle Port started as a TV producer, developing content for Netflix (Firefly Lane, Brazen) and Hallmark (The Santa Stakeout, A Christmas Treasure) before transitioning into entertainment journalism. Her love of story went from interest to lifelong passion while at The University of Pennsylvania, where she fell in with a student-run web series, Classless TV, and it was a gateway drug. Arielle Port has been a Writer for Screen Rant since August 2024. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend and more importantly, her cat, Boseman.
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HBO’s new surprise hit comedy, I Love LA, had a major star cameo in season 1, episode 4 — Elijah Wood, playing a (hopefully) fictionalized version of himself. For an actor best known for his role as Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings movies, Wood has been popping up in increasingly obscure, niche TV shows.
Likely to avoid being typecast after Peter Jackson’s epic trilogy, Wood pivoted to entirely different roles and films, like the 2004 indie dramedy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. He also lent his vocal talents to 2006's Happy Feet, an animated penguin film by George Miller, the director of Mad Max.
However, over the last 15 years, Wood has increasingly found passion projects in television. Wood joining the fairly unknown cast of I Love LA proves this trend isn’t changing anytime soon.
Elijah Wood’s Cameo In I Love LA Continues His Trend Of Appearing In Smaller Passion Projects
Elijah Wood’s cameo in I Love LA fits seamlessly into the quirky, self-selecting career path he’s carved out since Lord of the Rings. I Love LA itself is a surprise HBO hit, not based on recognizable IP and populated largely by fictional celebrities rather than actual star power, which makes Wood’s appearance as “Elijah Wood” all the more striking.
With the exception of Josh Hutcherson, whose character Dylan is rapidly becoming the best TV boyfriend, the cast isn’t built around familiar faces, so Wood showing up is a genuine surprise. Every other “celebrity” in the show so far has been a fictional star (including an unrecognizable Ayo Edebiri playing a British pop star and Froy Gutierrez’s fictional singer Landry).
I Love LA season 1, episode 4 name-drops Wood early — Tellulah, Maia, and Alani are invited to a party at his house — but Elijah is hiding upstairs. When Alani and Maia stumble upon him, the show unveils a hilariously bizarre version of the actor: a germaphobe who prefers “clips” to movies and suffers from spotty memory.
The climax of the episode has Elijah asking Maia and Alani to put on robes to cover their outerwear, which they misinterpret as an invitation to a threesome, prompting Elijah to bemoan how often this happens to “Sweet Elijah.” It’s exactly the kind of offbeat, self-deprecating, deeply weird role Wood gravitates toward in his television projects.
Wood Has Quietly Built One Of The Weirdest Filmographies Post-Lord Of The Rings
Ryan (Elijah Wood) and Wilfred (Jason Gann) sharing food in the Wilfred trailer.
Elijah Wood has assembled one of the strangest and most fascinating post-franchise filmographies in Hollywood. After Lord of the Rings made him a household name, he could have coasted on franchise money or stepped into another large-scale tentpole. Instead, Wood veered hard into the bizarre, the risky, and the defiantly niche.
Wood's FX comedy Wilfred set the tone early: he played a depressed man who sees a dog as a man in a dog costume, creating a surreal, existential buddy comedy unlike anything else on TV. Then came Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, a narratively convoluted and joyfully chaotic show.
More recently, Wood joined Yellowjackets in season 2, playing the unexpectedly sweet love interest of Christina Ricci's unhinged Misty Quigley, which is a perfectly off-kilter fit for a series about trauma, cults, and cannibalism. Across these choices, a pattern emerges: Wood is irresistibly drawn to offbeat stories that let him play strange men in stranger worlds.
Wood doubled down on that sensibility behind the scenes as well, co-founding the production company SpectreVision, dedicated to psychological thrillers and indie horror films. Rather than chasing blockbusters, Wood has used his LOTR legacy to champion passion projects, building a career defined by curiosity, risk, and delightfully weird taste, with I Love LA being the latest example.
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Rachel Sennott
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I Love LA
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