How to Die Alone comes in for a Season 1 landing.
2024’s Fall TV season has drifted into gear and Hulu’s latest comedy should be on your weekend watch list. Over on the streamer, How to Die Alone has garnered a Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Natasha Rothwell’s comedy sits at 90% on the Tomatometer. Fans who are already checking out Season 1 are loving the travel-based show as well. The Audience Score is at 85% respectively. Now that the final episodes of this season are out in the world, look for a lot more viewers to take a full dive in. In How to Die Alone, Rothwell plays Mel, a fundamentally lonely worker at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City. She’s lost her way and resigned herself to working this quirky little job weaving throughout the terminals.
However, Mel wasn’t always this way. A brush with catastrophe motivates the airline worker to branch out and rediscover her dreams. Alongside Rothwell’s equal parts funny and heartbreaking heroine are Conrad Ricamora’s Rory, Jocko Sims as her ex Alex, and KeiLyn Durrel Jones as baggage-wrangler Terrence. In a winning formula for comedies these days, there’s a balance between laugh out loud funny sequences and diving into exactly how Mel got trapped in this airport to begin with. It’s well-worth a watch if any of that sounds like your speed at all. Talking to Rolling Stone, Rothwell explained how last season’s White Lotus appearance really greased the runway for How to Die Alone to fly.
Natahsa Rothwell is finally ready for takeoff.
– Hulu)
“I feel really grateful that now the roles and opportunities that are presenting themselves to me are varied and are dynamic, and they can trust me to nail the joke, but they can also trust me to bring on the tears,” Rothwell admitted. “It’s a joy to be able to have the full range of emotion when I’m performing.” On social media, you’ve seen a lot of fans echo that sentiment. Despite being in an absolute deluge of TV programming choices, it can still be hard to find a show with this exact set of sensibilities. The actress knows how rare this is and has been encouraging fans to stream How to Die Alone now if they want a Season 2 sometime soon. With enough of a push, that could very well be in the cards for the future on Hulu.
How To Die Alone Positively Discusses Loneliness & Self-Worth
How to Die Alone is now streaming on Hulu.
– Hulu)
One of the biggest strengths that How to Die Alone has going for it is how topical this story is right now. Loneliness is a huge issue for tons of viewers out there. Mel really struggles with the weight of other people’s expectations for her and breaking into a new routine socially. Loudermilk ended up being huge for Netflix recently. A big part of that show’s appeal was humanizing rehab and recovery. How to Die Alone might start some helpful conversations around loneliness. Rothwell told The Daily Beast her hopes for people out there watching.
“It’s f******* terrifying. Truly, this is the most vulnerable piece of art I’ve put out into the world. And that speech at the end of 101, I don’t know how much acting I was doing in it. For me, it’s very hard to admit how hard it is to let yourself be loved, and how hard it is to love ourselves,” Rothwell admits. “Then to say it out loud and have people consume it? But what’s greater than that fear is the confidence in knowing that people will connect to it and feel less lonely.”
Rothwell adds, “So I hope that when people see the rawness of Mel’s journey on the show and the comedy that comes from her going balls to the wall as she’s trying to figure out how to be a human Roomba and clean up her life, and hit wall after wall after wall—I hope that fosters a community where we can all face each other’s loneliness by just being with each other, seeing each other, connecting.”
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