Kandi Burruss Says She ‘Couldn’t be Happier’ Since Leaving RHOA as She Takes on Reasonable Doubt Role (Exclusive)

• Kandi Burruss has a guest role in season 2 of Reasonable Doubt, which she landed after running into the show’s creator on a flight
• The former Real Housewives of Atlanta star tells PEOPLE she pulled from a real-life relationship with an addict to play someone in recovery on the Hulu series
• Burruss hopes “people will be able to see me in a different light as an actress” after her on Reasonable Doubt

Since announcing her departure from Real Housewives of Atlanta earlier this year, Kandi Burruss has stayed quite busy, most recently with a guest appearance on Reasonable Doubt.

The role came together after Burruss, 48, happened to run into the show’s creator Raamla Mohamede on a flight earlier this year. “She was headed to Atlanta, coming to start production on this season, and we exchanged information,” Burruss tells PEOPLE. “I remember we sat down here in Atlanta and we were talking and she was like, ‘Well, what type of role would you want to play?’ And I told her, ‘I want something that I could really show my acting chops. I want to show people something with real emotion.’”

On the Oct. 3 episode, Burruss made her debut as Eboni Phillips, a recovering addict who Daniel (Tim Jo) wants to testify in the Tucker case since he took custody of her child away when she went to rehab.

“To me, Eboni is an interesting person to play,’” Burruss, who will return as Eboni in the Oct. 10 episode, says. “Especially now in a world where women are being exposed in entertainment and sports for all these wild things that they were doing behind the scenes that we never knew was going on, Eboni would be one of those women that were affected in a situation like that where for so many years nobody believed Eboni was going through these things. Everybody felt like she was a person who dealt with self-destruction and instead of actually being a person who was a victim in a relationship with a powerful man.”

Burruss says she pulled from media headlines to prepare to play Eboni, but also had a personal touchstone that helped her relate to her Reasonable Doubt character.

“A very long time ago, I dated a guy who actually abused prescription drugs,” Burruss reveals. “I remembered sometimes we’d be having a regular conversation, but then all of a sudden, he’ll be talking and then he start nodding off in the middle of a conversation. I took my mind back to those moments and tried to put myself in his shoes to be on the opposite side of it, to be like, ‘Okay, what was going on in his mind when he was doing this?’ and how it affected him. I really feel like people will be able to see me in a different light as an actress after seeing Eboni.”

The former Bravo star says that getting into that headspace while filming was “not easy.”

“You have to think about really sad or really dark things to put you in this place to play the role and you have to do it again and again. And even after the scene is over, you’re still feeling that emotion, that anxiety,” Burruss says. “It takes a minute to come out of it.”

Despite RHOA being filled with drama, Burrus found filming Reasonable Doubt to be “totally different” than shooting a reality show.

“Acting is almost escapism in a way,” she says. “Being on a scripted show, when the scene is done, nobody has hard feelings. You go home and everything is at peace. But when you’re doing reality, everybody cannot wait to go in on each other. As soon as you leave the scene, you’re still mad at each other. I get home, it’s like all-out war. It’s night and day.”

Along with guest-starring on Reasonable Doubt, Burruss has toured with her group XSCAPE, signed on to produce Othello on Broadway and began filming more episodes of Showtime’s The Chi since announcing her departure from RHOA in February.

“I couldn’t be happier with the way things have been going since I am not on the show,” Burruss says. “Not that I don’t like the show, I just feel like when I left, I had done 14 seasons straight. No other Housewife had done that. So a lot of times, I was filming all year-round reality, and that can be a little draining. Since I left Housewives, I’ve done a lot of things I’m super excited about. It’s a lot happening.”

New episodes of Reasonable Doubt premiere on Thursdays on Hulu.