How To Die Alone follows Mel, an employee at JFK airport who feels stuck. Having never fallen in love and lost her ability to dream of something more, everything changes when she faces a near-death experience. Mel will begin to reexamine her life in a journey to discover and create the life she not only wants but deserves as she learns how to dream again.
Natasha Rothwell (Wonka, Sonic The Hedgehog 2) is the star and co-creator of How To Die Alone, taking inspiration from her own life with Vera Santamaria (BoJack Horseman, Pen15) serving as her co-creator and co-showrunner. The hilarious cast led by Rothwell includes Conrad Ricamora (Fire Island, How To Get Away With Murder) and Jocko Sims (New Amsterdam, The Last Ship). The cast strikes the perfect balance between comedy and deeply emotional moments in a series full of existential questions of self-discovery and self-worth.
Screen Rant interviewed Jocko Sims and KeiLyn Durrel Jones about their new Hulu comedy series How To Die Alone. They praised Rothwell as a creative collaborator and shared insight into their characters. Sims broke down his character's emotional journey tied to Mel and Jones revealed how his character helps lift Mel up.
Terrance Encourages Mel To "Challenge Herself To Face Her Fears" In How To Die Alone
Screen Rant: This show is absolutely amazing. I feel like Mel is such a relatable character. She is fantastic to watch and it's such a learning experience watching her journey. Tell me a little bit about your characters and their connection to Mel, and we'll start with you, Jocko.
Jocko Sims: My character is Mel's boss and former fling at work. Alex, eventually during the fling catches feelings for Mel and it catches Mel off guard when he expresses those feelings to her. Now Alex is engaged to get married and it's all a mess.
KeiLyn, tell us a little bit about Terrance and his connection to Mel.
KeiLyn Durrel Jones: Terrance is Mel's workplace buddy. She comes down to his territory, his turf in the airport for her smoke breaks, and they just sort of strike up a friendship, a casual friendship. He wants to see her win and encourages her to do the work and to challenge herself to face her fears.
Speaking of that, how do you think your characters, Alex and Terrance, influenced Mel's path of rediscovering her dreams and the finding a new meaning in her life? We'll start with you this time, KeiLyn.
KeiLyn Durrel Jones: Terrance is really good at helping Mel see the positive spin on that situation or potential next steps to challenge herself and to go out on a limb and do the scary things that are going to cultivate a better life or a better situation, a better day to day. Including something as small as quitting smoking or taking her first flight.
The Men In Mel's Life Are A Distraction From Her "Journey Of Discovering Herself"
"Humans are often in positions to make choices based on the options that we have."
Jocko, how does your character influence Mel's rediscovery of her dreams in finding a new meaning in her life?
Jocko Sims: I think it makes it much more difficult for Mel. I think that humans are often in positions to make choices based on the options that we have. If you got a couple of options, a couple of great guys who are throwing love her way and she's already on this journey of discovering herself and healing.
And then she's distracted here and let alone there may be another employee or two wink, wink, and on the process of her finding this love. It just makes it harder and more complicated. And thank God we wouldn't have a show otherwise.
One thing I love about this, we'll call it love triangle a little bit, is that I like everybody involved and it's really rare that you see that in shows. I can see everybody's point of view and how they're right for each other in a way. But Jocko question for you is in what ways do you think Alex's character evolves over the course of the series?
Jocko Sims: Well, I think that the first bump in the road for Alex that we see is the fact that Mel is going to take someone to the wedding and it's not her best friend Rory. That throws him off his game. So that causes him to sort of self-reflect for a moment, why am I feeling this way?
I'm getting married, she should be free to do whatever she wants, so it throws him off. We do also see a flashback where Mel first dumps Alex or rejects his advance to have a love relationship with her. So we'll see some trouble, some turbulence there.
But I think that between moments like that, it is just interesting because you have that dynamic where Alex was rejected by Mel, and again, like I mentioned, the fact that she might be interested in somebody, he's clearly jealous of Terrence.
KeiLyn we're talking about episode seven. That's one of my favorite moments was I asked her about you, but I was trying to act like I didn't know your name. I was like, what's his name, Terrance? So seeing those little moments of him trying to deal with that is kind of fun.
I feel like everybody should have a Terrance in their life. He's such an uplifting dude that really supports the people around him. What aspects of Terrance's character do you personally relate to KeiLyn and how did you bring those elements to your performance?
KeiLyn Durrel Jones: Yeah, man, I pride myself on uplifting my friends and challenging them to see the light in themselves. Not to get all woo woo, but see the God in themselves. And I encourage people. I've encouraged girlfriends and friends and whomever to start businesses or change careers or whatever.
In that way, I do see myself in Terrance. It's similar to what Jocko was saying. I connected with Terrance on a deep level early on. I myself am not a vet, but I am a military brat. My parents, my brothers, my aunts, my uncles or whatever. So there's a lot of things in Terrance that I see in myself, and that coupled with the brilliant writing that Natasha etal bring to the table just makes it really easy to just step into it and lock in.
"We like to get in there and muck around in the mud and play."
I think Natasha's absolutely amazing throughout everything she does on this show. Can you talk about your experience working with her as a collaborator on this series?
KeiLyn Durrel Jones: Well, early on from the first chemistry read, even though it was on Zoom, we were 3000 miles apart, we really connected. II told myself going into the audition that if I just had a good connection and did well in the audition, that I could just walk away feeling good about myself, and I did.
We literally, in the acting of it, brought each other to tears. And so once we met in person, it just felt like old friends and she's such a great leader, a great writer.
She's a brilliant mind, brilliant comedian, a brilliant actor, and so she's so easy to fall in love with. So once you get into the muck with her as actors, we like to get in there and muck around in the mud and play and it is just like summer camp in cold ass Toronto.
Jocko Sims: I'll just say I can't add much more than what he said. I felt a lot of that, but I will say it's not necessarily the question, but I want to add that how impressed I constantly am with her wearing all of the hats that she does.
I've seen people attempt to do that before, but I always talk about how she just does it so effortlessly and doesn't appear to be exhausted. I know she didn't get any more than three, four hours of sleep. There's no way based on all that she's doing.
She's getting approvals while we're doing scenes and stuff. And I always joke and say that I never even saw her sigh one time, not ever of getting overwhelmed. So whatever she takes to do that, I'm all about it, man. But it's very impressive and such an amazing joy and experience being around her.
More About How To Die Alone Season 1
Melissa is a neurotic fat black woman who has never been in love, but after a brush with death she refuses to settle for anything less than the life she wants, leading her to become "that bitch" no matter what.
Check out our other How To Die Alone interviews:
How To Die Alone debuts on Hulu on September 13.
Source: Screen Rant Plus
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25242409/20230608_Palworld_Screenshot_02.png)
English (US) ·