10 December 11 -17, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Gen Z from Big D Dallas actor Froy Gutierrez lands a role as a Christian pop singer in HBO’s new Gen Z breakout, I Love LA. BY ALEX GONZALEZ F roy Gutierrez might have a newfound love for Los Angeles, but he’s a Dallas boy at heart. On Rachel Sennott’s new HBO series, I Love LA, the Highland Park native plays Lukas Landry, a Christian pop star with a viral TikTok presence who per- forms mononymously under the moniker Landry. He’s first introduced in the series’ fourth episode, which takes place at a party hosted by fellow Dallas native Quenlin Blackwell (who plays herself) in the home of Elijah Wood. Landry quickly befriends stylist Charlie (Jordan Firstman), who mistakenly believes Landry is gay. Though Landry reveals he is straight, Charlie jumps at the opportunity to join Landry and his clique, who add him to a group chat to hold each other accountable when they have the urge to masturbate or watch porn. Charlie and Landry’s friendship is unfortunately cut short by the fifth epi- sode, after Landry is revealed to have died in an ATV accident — sounds about LA. While Landry was still navigating pop stardom before his untimely death, Gutier- rez is now more than a decade into his ca- reer as an actor. The Booker T. Washington High School alum made his television debut in Nickelodeon’s Bella and the Bulldogs in 2015 and has since appeared on shows like Teen Wolf and One Day at a Time. In 2021, he starred as teen football star Jamie Henson on Freeform’s anthology series Cruel Sum- mer, which was filmed in Dallas. But though he’s living the West Coast life these days, it’s clear from our recent chat with him that you can’t take the Texas out of the boy. We caught up with Gutierrez via Zoom as I Love LA continues to capture LA culture and spark mixed reception along the way. Where did your passion for acting begin? It’s kind of hard to place it, honestly, because I kind of just did a bunch of stuff growing up. My mom was very interested in having me pursue different creative pursuits, whether that was visual art or pottery, or any of those things. She would send me to summer camps, basically for theater. And I was a super shy kid, so I ended up finding an outlet to connect with people socially through improv, or whatever have you. The theater kid energy was strong. What are some of your fondest memories of growing up in Dallas? When I was little, my dad would take me to Northpark Center. He would hang out with me while I went to look at the animals [in fountains]. I’d be like ‘Tortugas y patos! Tortugas y patos!’ I also loved running up and down the plant hold- ers. My dad and I would go to AMC The- atres, and there was a snowmobile simulator, so we would play with the snow- mobile simulator while we were waiting for a movie. Do you remember the first stage production you were ever part of? I was in middle school, and it was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I played Mr. Tumnus. I was 11 and I worked very hard on perfecting my satyr walk. It wasn’t enough just to be in the cos- tume. I was like, ‘Well, surely the bones are different.’ So I ended up walking around on the stage on my tippy-toes the whole time, because I was like, ‘That’s what the goat leg shape would be.’ I was trying to be method. Flash forward to now: How did you land the role of Landry on I Love LA? A big part of being an actor is self-tapes. You set up your phone — sometimes you set up a ring light, and sometimes it’s just the window — and you read off a script. I actually turned [the tape] in really late, so I didn’t even think I was go- ing to be considered for it. And then I got the call a week later that they wanted me, and I was super excited for it. I’d read the original pilot for the show a year ago, and I was very interested. I had no idea what it was going to be. It just felt really easy. Head to dallasobserver.com to read the full Q&A. ▼ RADIO MAN BEHIND THE MIC RICHARD BRIAN ‘RB’ HARRIS TRANSFORMS DENTON’S KUZU 92.9 FM INTO A GLOBAL STAGE FOR MUSIC DISCOVERY. BY PRESTON BARTA I n a small North Texas studio, surrounded by records stacked like memory towers and the hum of radio gear, Richard Brian “RB” Harris finds his peace. He leans over a notepad, playlist-in-progress scrawled in me- ticulous script — a ritual that connects him to tradition, to self and to a north star that has seen him through seasons of hardship. “Radio was there for me before I even knew how to find myself,” Harris tells the Observer. “It’s always been somewhere I could get away, even just in my own mind.” Harris didn’t stroll casually onto the air- waves. His story is marked by hidden val- leys: dreams deferred, battles with himself, years lost and restored. “There was a time not so long ago when I was sleeping wherever I could,” he recalls. “Honestly, music was what kept me going.” Through those dark, rootless stretches, his love for radio never waned; in fact, it only grew more vital and urgent. When Denton’s KUZU 92.9 FM was still a whispered project among a passionate few, Harris lingered on the edges, searching for an inroad. “I just knew if I could get a foot in the door, I’d make it count,” he says with a wry smile. It wasn’t until years later, when a call came and a demo was sent, that he finally wound up behind the board, heart pound- ing, ready to broadcast. “I never came here with some grand mes- sage,” Harris says. “I just wanted to play mu- sic I love — stuff people weren’t hearing anywhere else.” Restless with his own library, Harris scoured far beyond familiar genres and landed in the Levant, falling deep into the rich textures of pan-Arabic and pan-Persian music. “I realized nobody around here was dig- ging into this,” he says. “There’s so much happening over there — so many stories these artists are telling.” Bringing those stories to North Texas has changed not only the station but also the community of listeners who tune in each week to his two-hour show, Mondays from 3-5 p.m. “When you hear someone from Lebanon or Egypt tell their story through music, it’s like a letter arriving from another world,” he says. “It matters.” Indeed, listeners — both local and half- way across the globe — now reach for the artists Harris introduces, searching Band- camp and streaming platforms for names they’d never heard before. “It’s wild to get emails from people say- ing, ‘Hey, I never would’ve found this record without your show,’” he says. And yet, RB’s show is about more than new sounds. It’s a home for the overlooked and the quietly extraordinary. “I’m not trying to preach at anybody. I just want to give people a chance to hear someone else’s reality,” he explains. “All I can do is play the music, give a bit of context and let the songs do the work.” For Harris, the invisible thread of shared humanity weaves through every set list. His handwritten playlists reflect that process — sometimes neatly ordered, sometimes a col- lage of last-minute discoveries and sudden inspiration. The journey to this moment is etched in every selection he makes. Harris, a veteran with a service-related disability, is candid about the daily challenges he faces. “I’m not always the most outgoing per- son,” he admits. “Social stuff is tough for me. Doing radio is my way to meet people and build something, but at my own speed.” He speaks about being on the spectrum with honesty, describing radio as “a way to build my own lane... a place where I belonged.” In the darkest days, he says, crafting a playlist became an act of survival, with the head- phones serving as his lifeline to the world. RB pours hours into discovery, tracking down rare tracks and outreach, connecting not only with the music but with the musi- cians themselves, sometimes reaching out to artists in Morocco, Indonesia or South America. “It blows my mind that a musician in Tehran is willing to chat, send a song and share what they’re doing,” he says. “That’s what I love about radio — it breaks down those borders.” Once, a band in Lebanon reached out af- ter he played their song, stunned to hear themselves on a local Texas broadcast. “That’s when it hits home for me. Music re- ally does travel farther than we think.” On air, Harris strikes a delicate balance: he provides necessary context while always al- lowing space for the audience’s interpretation. “The best thing I can do is get out of the way,” Harris says. “Let the music speak for itself. Sometimes you just play something because it grabs your gut, and you trust your listeners enough to roll with you.” There is poetry in the way he describes this process. The show is a shared journey with shadows and light, heartbreak and hope. “My playlists aren’t just a group of songs — I like to think each one is a window into what I’m feeling, or what’s happening in the world,” Harris says. He remains intensely invested in the show’s evolution. In North Texas, KUZU FM may be a low-power station, but Harris’s voice — and the voices he lifts —resonate far beyond county lines. The road for RB Harris has been turbulent, but inside that little stu- dio, in the company of static, stories and songs, he’s writing a new chapter by hand, by ear and by heart. And for those who tune in, the world grows just a bit wider, and much, much richer. “If I can help someone get through the day or just wake up to a bigger world for two hours, then I’ve done something right,” he says. Kenny Laubbacher/HBO Dallas actor Froy Gutierrez (right) alongside actor Jordan Firstman in Rachel Sennott’s I Love LA. ▼ Culture
