‘How to Die Alone’ Co-Showrunner Talks Bringing Natasha Rothwell’s Vision to Life to Explore ‘Being Alone’ vs. ‘Loneliness’

“How to Die Alone” introduces a protagonist aiming to become the main character in her life — the backdrop that co-showrunner Vera Santamaria and series creator and star Natasha Rothwell (“Insecure,” “The White Lotus”) hoped to use to investigate the distinction between feeling lonely and simply being alone.

“She really wanted to explore the difference between being alone and loneliness,” Vera Santamaria told TheWrap of Rothwell, who created, wrote and executive produced the series. “She really had her thesis there, which is that they’re two separate things. We wanted to show that Mel, when we meet her, is a person who is lonely, so she’s wanting to be with people, versus being just happy and alone when you’re content.”

Executive produced by Santamaria, “How to Die Alone” introduces Rothwell as Mel, an airport employee who begins to shift her mindset in her less-than-satisfying life to becoming the main character after a near-death experience prompts her to re-evaluate her priorities. The perilous experience, which sees Mel being crushed by a piece of furniture she was determined to reach by herself as she reaches for a piece of takeout crab rangoon, was “ripped” from Rothwell’s life as a lover of both DIY furniture and crab rangoon, according to Santamaria.

“In the original conception, she had a different near-death experience, but we took two of her experiences in life and just brought them together,” Santamaria said, adding that the turn of events “definitely feels authentic to her.”

By the time Santamaria came on-board the project, the co-showrunner said, the vision for “How to Die Alone” had lived with Rothwell for about seven or even eight years after Rothwell developed it at another network. Rothwell reached out to Santamaria after the project moved over to ABC Signature, hoping Santamaria could partner on the series to craft it “into a show that could sustain and that went a little deeper.”

“I read the project [and] I saw everything she was trying to do, and signed right up,” Santamaria recalled. What followed was a “back and forth” of suggestions and edits between Rothwell and Santamaria as they dug deeper, looking to transform Mel “into a person who’s taking more risks … who has friends, but is also just more content in her life if she’s alone.”

Still, Santamaria and Rothwell agreed that the audience needed to view Mel as “flawed and making mistakes that make us want to look between our eyes being like, ‘don’t do that.'” This prompted the pair to dig into Rothwell’s past a little deeper.

“Natasha herself is just such a strong, powerful, together person, and it really was cycling back to maybe another version of Natasha in her mid [to] late 20s, and pulling from that person who was still very much finding her way, and flawed, and making big mistakes,” Santamaria said.

A projection of a more current version of Rothwell is depicted as an aspiration for Mel via magical realism in the show, which appears in moments when the main character realizes who “she wishes she could be, but isn’t quite yet.” These “psychological projections,” as Rothwell calls them, were always part of Rothwell’s vision for the show, though Santamaria and Rothwell worked to craft an “intentional grab bag of elements we wanted to choose from for the magical realism element of the show.”

While viewers get glimpses of Mel’s family and friends as the show goes on, the co-showrunners worked to expand the footprint of the JFK Airport as her workplace, opening the door for Mel’s growth and evolution to transpire within her work setting as well.

“What we did was bring more into the workplace so that it could be a place where we could really show all the different sides of herself, but kind of in a more contained element,” Santamaria said. “We have the fun of a workplace, but then we also have a place where she can be reflective, a place where she can dream.”

As Mel considers how she’s holding herself back from pursuing the life she deserves, she looks outward at her community — including her friend Rory (Conrad Ricamora), who has been a somewhat problematic force.

The growing pains within their friendship are something Santamaria said was pulled from both Rothwell’s life and other writers in the show’s writers’ room, saying, “We’ve had these best friends that you sometimes are the person that you are just with, but that you may outgrow, and having to have those hard conversations to see, can this person be in conflict with you? Can your friendship survive a conflict?”

When audiences meet Mel, she’s also struggling to get over her ex who’s also her co-worker, Alex (Jocko Sims), who recently got engaged to a girlfriend Mel had hoped was just a rebound. As Mel tries to get out of her comfort zone in her love life, Santamaria and Rothwell’s investigation of loneliness shines in full force. “Some people end up partnered, some people don’t, but that doesn’t mean the people who have ended up un-partnered are unhappy,” Santamaria said.

Mel certainly won’t figure that out this season, though, according to Santamaria, who pointed to Rothwell’s comparison to a Roomba vacuum cleaner — Mel will “bump into a wall and … keep going.” Santamaria and Rothwell hope to continue telling Mel’s story of hits and misses in more “How to Die Alone,” which they’ve mapped out for four seasons.

“We talked through really four seasons of what Mel’s arc could be, and we needed to do that work in order to build our pilot,” Santamaria said. “I’m really excited about where it goes in subsequent seasons, and each season gets more and more ambitious, and she takes bigger swings.”

As viewers fall in love with Mel and “all the mistakes she makes along the way,” Santamaria hopes the show resonates with viewers and keeps them thinking about the show’s relevance to their own lives.

“The thing we say a lot is ‘laughing yourself into an epiphany,’ and that’s what I’m really hoping viewers get from watching the show, which is … you’re having fun along the way, but it’s actually exploring something really kind of profound, or something that really reflects with the audience as a whole,” Santamaria said.

The first four episodes of “How to Die Alone” are now streaming on Hulu, with two new episodes dropping on Fridays.

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