Natasha Rothwell Reveals Pinch-Me Moment That Gayle King Repeated a Line from How to Die Alone Back to Her (Exclusive) 

Natasha Rothwell is admittedly feeling “very exposed” as the show she’s pored over for nearly eight years finally premieres.

How to Die Alone, which the actress wrote, produced and stars in, sees Rothwell, 43, as Mel, a broke, fat, Black JFK airport employee who’s “never been in love and forgotten how to dream,” and it’s a story that she’s been trying to tell since 2016.

“I feel really vulnerable,” she tells PEOPLE hours after the first three episodes premiere on Hulu on Sept. 13. “I feel so loved. The response already has been unbelievable, and it’s just… How do you describe being inside of a literal dream come true? It’s just surreal.”

She partially has Gayle King to thank for the overwhelming feeling of love.

Two weeks before the show’s premiere, Rothwell sat down for an interview with King, 69, for Oprah Daily, and recalls that King referenced a joke between Mel and her coworker Rory (Conrad Ricamora) that appears in the show.

“She starts off screaming ‘Woman King!’ which is in the pilot, and I was like, ‘You’re literally Woman King!’ And she was like, ‘I know!'”

“She had four pieces of printer paper with handwritten notes,” Rothwell continues of the pinch-me interaction with King. “And she starts off, she’s just like, ‘Natasha, I’m upset with you. I was only supposed to watch the first episode, maybe two. I binged the whole thing last night.’ And she just went through and started asking me [questions], quoting the show back to me.”

“And I was just sitting there. I was like, I don’t know how to receive this. Gayle King loves my show. So that was pretty major.”

The germination process for How to Die Alone began shortly after Rothwell worked on the first season of Issa Rae’s Insecure. She recalls being “elated” at the “development deal” she was offered at the time — and she knew exactly what she wanted to do with it.

“I started working on it and literally entered that space, determined to sort of follow the fear and do… I wanted to not pull any punches. I wanted to be as authentic and vulnerable as possible in the project,” she says. “And I came to the project title first. I was like, How To Die Alone. It’s been called that for almost eight years.”

“We talked about loneliness and being alone, and how I confused those two for a long time. And I was so scared to die alone, and I was waiting for my life to start until I met a man who could meet the expectation I had,” the White Lotus star continues of her inspiration behind the show’s title.

“So then it dawned, I was like, ‘Huh, so it’s not the partnership that I’m missing, it’s the connectedness.’ And so after that conversation with [HBO’s head of comedy] Amy [Gravitt], I was just like, How to Die Alone.”

After so many years of work on the show — which Gravitt graciously allowed her to bring to Disney after her HBO deal ended, despite that being something they “really don’t allow” — Rothwell admits that “putting my pencil down on this show, or the season, rather, of the show was, I think, the hardest part of this process, bar none.”

It was an especially challenging transition given that she wrapped up the editing process right as she arrived in Ko Samui, Thailand to begin production on season 3 of The White Lotus.

“I just sat there after I exited the Zoom, and I just genuinely didn’t know what to do next. It was just like… Now I have to let the world see it,” she remembers. “It was really scary to just put it out there, and it’s something that I’m so proud of and something I’ve worked so hard for, and I’ve done a lot of work on myself not to be a people pleaser…and so I’m trying my best to white-knuckle those lessons and not put too much stock in how people are receiving it.”

Still, though, the response she’s gotten so far has her grinning ear-to-ear. “It’s being received so well, and I’m exhaling. I guess I held out a little bit of hope that people would like it.”

The first four episodes of How to Die Alone are streaming on Hulu, and new episodes premiere weekly on Fridays through Sept. 27.