- Natasha Rothwell gained acclaim on HBO's "Insecure" and season one of "The White Lotus."
- Her new Hulu show, "How to Die Alone," weaves hard-won lessons from her personal life into the story.
The most painful scene for Natasha Rothwell to write in her new Hulu series "How to Die Alone" was the most personal one. Fresh out of the hospital after a near-death accident, Rothwell's single and anxious airport worker Mel is realizing the pitfalls of listing herself as her own emergency contact during an actual emergency. Now, she's distraught, lonely, and rethinking her life while drinking alone at a bar.
"The truth is, I want to be seen. I want to be loved, you know what I'm saying?" she tells the bartender through tears. "I just want someone to love me, even though I can't."
The monologue doubles as a thesis statement for Rothwell's long-gestating new series, which took seven years to get off the ground after it was originally developed under her deal at HBO. The show follows Mel's vulnerable, messy journey to learn to love herself and make sense of her life with or without a partner. It's a struggle Rothwell herself knows intimately, which is why the scene was so emotional to shoot.
"I was just tapping into the raw feeling of longing and feeling stuck and feeling that you are on the brink of being better than who you are, but not knowing how to push forward and not feeling worthy of love," Rothwell tells BI. "It was important for me to have [Mel] say those things out loud, because I think it kind of takes the power out of it."
"How to Die Alone" represents a step forward in both Rothwell's personal and professional development. The 43-year-old has lived many lives since leaving drama school: She taught high-school drama in the Bronx, and English for a year in Japan. An audition for "SNL" led to her getting hired as a writer, though she lasted only one season.
Writing and stealing scenes on Issa Rae's "Insecure" ultimately helped her feel the opposite — she won a Peabody Award and the 2022 NAACP Image Award for her performance as Kelli Prenny — giving her confidence to play a more vulnerable, serious role on season one of HBO's "The White Lotus." (She's set to reprise the character in the hotly anticipated third season, which just wrapped filming in Thailand.)
And now, finally, Rothwell is in a starring role — one she wrote herself, that weaves hard-won lessons from her personal life into her character's story. Centering someone who looks like her in "How to Die Alone" was vital to Rothwell's own healing.
"Representation was a huge part in my inability to believe that I could be the hero of my own story, I could be the lead in the rom com of my life, because according to film and television, I'm the sidekick. I'm supposed to help a white protagonist get theirs and you know very little about me," Rothwell tells BI.
"It's been the thrill of a lifetime to be able to play a character that is nuanced and contains multitudes and is allowed to be a mess," she adds. "I think more representation in that area is needed."
Below, Rothwell speaks to Marissa Evans about the themes of "How to Die Alone," from how she processes loneliness to how she deepens her friendships.
"How to Die Alone" is, obviously, about loneliness. How has your definition of loneliness and aloneness changed since writing and wrapping the show?
I'm the type of person that recharges when I'm by myself. So being literally alone with no one with me is not a scary place for me. But growing up being a child of TV and movies, I was educated by media to not think that that was enough, because I needed a man to make it make sense. It made me resent being literally alone and by myself and feel like I was not supposed to be living a full life until I was in a romantic partnership.
Thank God for therapy — 20-plus years and counting — that's when I realized the real boogeyman that I should have been afraid of is loneliness, and the antidote to loneliness is vulnerability and really connecting with people. That can be hard, and it's also the most rewarding part of the human experience. My relationship to loneliness has changed dramatically now that the show is being promoted and out in the world, because I'm connecting with more people than I ever have in my life on the topic.
What do you feel keeps Black women from having these conversations about loneliness?
I think there are a myriad of reasons, because oftentimes we're thought of as these, you know, burden bearers. We're the strong ones, we have Black girl magic, and that doesn't really jive with introspection and talks and conversations about loneliness when we're out there with our magic wands. And so I think oftentimes, we're not really given the platform to express this softer, vulnerable side to who we are.
In writing the show and thinking about your own journey, and the legion of Black women fans who adore you, what do you think keeps Black women from loving themselves?
I think that so much of what I believed was possible for me was directly born out of the media I consume in film and television, and I never saw a fat Black woman. And I'm talking early, early rom coms. We've definitely had some plus-size leads since, but I just didn't see that in the Nancy Meyers or the Nora Ephron movies. When you don't see yourself on screen in those positions, you start to question whether or not you're allowed to have those things.
That was a huge part in how I personally was running with a parachute in terms of loving myself and trying to figure out what I was worthy of. It's all of that insidious subconscious racism that just permeates our systems that tells us that we are not enough.
Seeing that amplified with Kamala right now, and just the vitriol that's being brought out of people, it's a wonder that any Black woman has had the courage to unapologetically love themselves, and I think that is what makes us so special and beautiful, and it makes me so proud to be a Black woman. When you see a Black woman loving herself unapologetically, it's a radical act of defiance, because systems have told us that we don't deserve to feel that way, and we aren't entitled to that.
What is the biggest difference in how you are navigating loneliness now?
Back then, I resented it, because I thought that it was a negative that I should, and I say that with quotes, "be partnered." Being alone was indicative of some moral failing. Now, I fucking relish it. My alone time is everything, and I take pride in the fact that I have created boundaries in my life so that I can have my alone time unapologetically.
It's night and day, compared to when I started out on my healing journey, to now, because I am so at peace. I'm so happy, I'm fulfilled, and a romantic relationship has to be an additive to that. I think before I was operating from a deficit, because I didn't think what I had was enough. And so it was a real reckoning of understanding what enough was and that I am enough, and that's just a really powerful evolution that I'm still on.
What does being enough look like to you?
From the perspective of a writer, it's when you press print, it's done, and you are left with a couple options. You can look at what you've written, ridicule it, and talk shit about it, or you can marvel on the fact that you've created something beautiful.
To put that in terms of just my own human existence, when it's pencils down, it's not saying that, "Oh, I'd be enough if…" and you fill in the blank. It's just, let's put a period on the end of that sentence. If this is me, if this is my life, and this is how it was going to look for forever, which is just me and my dog at home, I can't resent or not appreciate the beauty that's inherent in those circumstances. I think that that was a real turning point for me.
The antidote to loneliness is connecting with people. Has the show changed your idea of friendship? Has it made you a better friend?
I don't have the same friend group I used to have. It changes over time and I think that's a good thing, because a lot of times the change is beneficial for all parties involved, because their growth necessitates stepping away from me and my growth necessitates stepping away from them.
As I've gotten older — and I am a recovering people pleaser — I also realized that friendship is not being apologetic about what you need and not being afraid to ask for what you need. I spent the better part of my 20s being this need-less wonder. My friends had me as their friend, but I didn't really have any friends. I didn't want to ask anything from anyone. So I think friendship continued from that point to evolve into this healed version of myself where I want to be able to ask for what I need, and not be ashamed to experience that level of intimate reciprocity in a platonic friendship.
How do you deepen trust in your friendships?
It requires vulnerability, which is risky. There's no foolproof method on how to deepen relationships and have intimacy in your close friendships without testing the waters by trusting and building trust over time. People do have to prove themselves to you, and the only way that they can do that is if you give them an opportunity.
I spent so much of my life just completely terrified of that risk, and so it's much safer for folks to not try and to not put themselves out there. I think that is one option for sure, but I think life is less rich and there's less joy that you have access to if you don't allow yourself to risk being vulnerable.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.