September 18, 2024
Natasha Rothwell Is Enjoying Her Season Amid Launch Of First Show And Reesa Teesa Project
It's Natasha Rothwell's season and "no one is more excited than me," she tells Black Enterprise.
Natasha Rothwell is relishing over the premiere of her new Hulu show How To Die Alone, coming at the same time her TV adaption of TikToker Reesa Teesa’s Who TF Did I Marry was announced.
The actress/producer/screenwriter’s new show has been seven years in the making, and “no one is more excited than me,” she tells Black Enterprise. Having starred in shows like Issa Rae’s Insecure and films like Wonka and written for shows like Saturday Night Live, Rothwell’s new show sees her take the lead in a role she created with her own pen and paper.
Created by Rothwell, How to Die Alone follows Mel (Rothwell), a broke, plus-size, Black woman who operates accessibility vehicles at JFK Airport, who has never experienced love and has lost touch with her dreams. After a near-death experience, she embarks on a journey to finally take flight and live life on her own terms.
Rothwell was intentional when writing the show’s plot line and crafting the lead character she wanted audiences to relate to and find the motivation to love on themselves more.
“She’s someone who stopped dreaming. She’s someone who has settled for OK and doesn’t feel worthy of more than enough,” Rothwell explained. “And so it’s a really exciting role to be playing because I get to paint with a lot of really cool colors of emotion. I get to really play with subverting expectations, and I think audiences are really going to connect to her and find her to be someone they want to root for.”
“And I hope that in rooting for her, they root for themselves to start living and not wait,” she adds.
It’s a full-circle moment for Rothwell, who rose to fame playing Kelli Prenny on Issa Rae’s Insecure and saw firsthand what magic can happen when a Black woman takes the lead in creating her own story onscreen and doesn’t wait on someone of power to do it for her.
“I feel so lucky to have had a front-row seat to her experience,” Rothwell says of working with Issa. “And I think one of the biggest things I took away is that she didn’t see herself reflected in the way that she wanted, so she picked up a pen and created a show.”
Likening it to a “galvanizing” experience, Rothwell sees her time on Insecure as a catalyst that motivated her to remain tunnel-visioned and create a story where she and others like her felt represented.
“I think for me, plus-size Black women aren’t in the narrative nearly enough,” Rothwell states.
“And I think it was just exciting to be able to pick up a pen and change the story and allow us to have our neuroses and our searching and our finding. And none of it is being anchored on our size, or our color, or our gender.”
“We’re allowed to have stories and our gender and our color and our size are just facts. We don’t have to waste page real estate to justify our otherness,” she adds.
Joining Rothwell on the cast and crew are her fellow executive producer and co-showrunner Vera Santamaria and show stars KeiLyn Durrell Jones, who plays Terrance, and Jocko Sims, who plays Alex. While speaking with Black Enterprise, they all praised Rothwell’s storytelling ability and the vibe she created on the set.
Press play above for the full interviews, and be sure to check out How to Die Alone on Hulu.