HBO released the official trailer for Miss You, Love You, an original film written and directed by Jim Rash that pairs Allison Janney with Andrew Rannells and premieres Friday, May 29 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on HBO and streaming on HBO Max.
Rannells plays Jamie Simms opposite Janney's Diane Patterson, a grieving widow who is forced to plan her husband's funeral with her estranged son's assistant. The trailer makes clear this is not a straightforward bereavement drama: buried secrets and long-held resentments surface, and the unlikely partnership between Diane Patterson and Jamie Simms becomes a conduit for connection, laughter, and healing.
The supporting cast includes Bonnie Hunt as Judith Bibbs, Suzy Nakamura as Kathy, Oscar Nuñez as Minister and Lisa Schurga as Nance. The film was produced for Madison Wells by Kevin Walsh, Nat Faxon, Gigi Pritzker and Rachel Shane, with Michael Bowes as executive producer, Tammy Allen co-producing and Liz Lippman as associate producer.
Rash, who also directed and wrote the screenplay, said the story grew out of a personal moment. "The very simple premise of the assistant coming was the funeral for my father, it was over eight years ago, who had Parkinson’s," he said. He added that watching a stranger at that intimate, awkward moment shaped the film's approach. "I thought that was such an interesting lens to see when we’re in our most vulnerable and at our best and worst as we deal with our emotions, so I thought that’s where I started."
The trailer leans into tone shifts between awkwardness and tenderness. It shows Janney's Diane handling fury and farce in equal measure, and it positions Rannells’s Jamie as both intruder and improbable refuge—an assistant nobody knew who gradually becomes central to the ritual at the film’s heart.
Janney, whose credits include an Academy Award and multiple Emmy wins, described the part as unlike anything she'd been offered before. "I’ve never been offered a role of this size, and this scope," she said, calling Diane's arc "quite extraordinary." She said the role felt both intimidating and exciting: "Diane’s journey is quite extraordinary, and I was a little intimidated but also really excited about the challenge of doing a role like this and getting to do it with Andrew."
Janney praised Rash's writing and the chance to explore darker layers of a character. "Everything about Diane, all the different layers and the dark humor, everything about it was so appealing because Jim’s writing is so perfect and there’s not any fat in there anywhere," she said, adding that tackling "all this resentment and anger underneath and getting to take it on with this perfect stranger was heaven."
Context matters: Rash is best known to viewers for playing Dean Craig Pelton on Community, and his film credits include Fly Me to the Moon, Captain America: Civil War and Minority Report. Janney won four of her seven Primetime Emmy Awards working on The West Wing and has two Tony Awards. Rannells is a two-time Tony nominee whose television work includes roles on HBO's Girls and the film A Simple Favor.
The tension at the film’s core is human and awkward rather than plot-driven—Rash mined a private family moment where an assistant's presence felt intrusive and revealing, then pushed it toward laughter and repair. That choice makes Miss You, Love You less a conventional funeral movie and more an interpersonal experiment about who we let in when we are most exposed.
When Miss You, Love You arrives on HBO and HBO Max on May 29 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT, viewers will see Andrew Rannells as Jamie Simms at the story’s center: an outsider who becomes the unexpected bridge to Janney’s Diane Patterson, and, by the film's design, the catalyst for grudges to be aired, jokes to land and a kind of fragile healing to begin.
