Cheryl Strayed is no stranger to bringing her own work — and life — to the screen. Almost a decade ago, back in 2014, Strayed worked with Reese Witherspoon on Wild, an adaptation of her 2012 memoir. Witherspoon played a version of herself, while Laura Dern took on the role of her mother.

Strayed is back working with Witherspoon and Dern once again on Tiny Beautiful Things, as the three serve as executive producers for the series. This time, however, Sarah Pidgeon and Kathryn Hahn play a version of Strayed named Clare. (Pidgeon’s character, Strayed says, closely mirrors her own journey, while Hahn’s diverts hard, showing a version of her life had she not hiked the Pacific Coast Trail as she did in Wild.) The Hulu dramedy explores Clare as she takes on an advice column called Dear Sugar while her own life is falling apart.

I got a chance to speak with Strayed about what she learned from Wild that she took to this project, what it was like to watch Merritt Wever play her mother, what she’d say to her future self, and more.

TAYLOR GATES: So this is obviously not the first time that you’ve brought your own life to screen in some way, though it’s a little bit different because it’s a more fictionalized account. What did you learn from those previous projects that you took to this one?

CHERYL STRAYED: Not to be a diva. It’s really the reason that I got to be so deeply involved in both the making of Wild and the making of Tiny Beautiful Things. I approached it knowing that I was there to support the project — to offer any help or wisdom that I could as the author of these books — and to get back in the sandbox and play with all the people who were making it was a thrill. I didn’t come in and say, “Okay, you have to do this. This is what’s in the book, and I’m the boss of this.” I know that adaptation is about collaboration and about other artists sharing their vision of the work that I created.

I’m sure that’s hard to do, too, because it’s obviously such a personal thing — a personal project. What would you say is the scariest part of fictionalizing your life in this way?

I think the scariest part of fictionalizing…I mean, it’s interesting you didn’t say, “What’s the scary part of part of telling the truth?” Because there are so many things, like Sarah Pidgeon’s young Clare in Tiny Beautiful Things — much of her story is really from my life. Whereas Kathryn Hahn’s Clare, our star, she’s been formed by the same things I was formed by, but her life is very different than mine. The think the thing that’s scary about being fictionalized is that a lot of people won’t take the time to realize, “Okay, wait — that’s not just like Cheryl’s life.” You know what I mean? They assume that everything they see is true. And I’m like, “Well, no.” [Laughs] We took a lot of my story and made those the formative experiences that this complicated, interesting character who Kathryn Hahn plays would live out. But it’s not me. And so the scary part is, when we’re vulnerable, you always want to be loved, right? And will people judge you, will people think something of you? And what I’ve learned long ago is you can’t control that at all. What you need to do is just do your work, tell the truth with an open heart, be as transparent as possible, and hope that other people will see themselves and the characters you create, whether they’re based on you or fictional.

Image via Hulu

RELATED: ‘Tiny Beautiful Things’ Review: Kathryn Hahn Will Make You Laugh and Cry at the Same Time

The whole cast is really incredible. I’m especially curious about Merritt Wever’s casting because she’s so integral, and obviously, she’s playing a version of your mother. Can you talk a little bit about finding her and why she felt like the right choice for this?

Well, she’s an extraordinary actress, isn’t she? I mean, I just so admire everything she’s done, and I’m wowed by her presence on the screen. Watching her performance is so moving to me because I feel like — I don’t know how she did it — she did capture so much of the essence of my mom. And when she was first cast, we had a Zoom conversation. I was in Greece, she was in the US, and we talked for about an hour, and she asked me to tell her about my mom. And she asked me to tell her about how I found out my mom had cancer and how my mom died. And you know, I told her some of those deep stories, and she really just took all that, and the essence of my actual mom is right there on the screen. It moves me beyond words.

There are so many lines from your book and from this show as well that struck me so hard. One of them I can’t stop thinking about is in the pilot when Clare writes into Sugar and says, “Has anyone ever written in to offer comfort to you?” Can you talk a little bit about that moment and what that sort of means to you? There’s something about that that I can’t get out of my brain.

Our showrunner and creator, Liz [Tigelaar], wrote the pilot, and I think that when she wrote that line, she was really capturing something that is the essence of Sugar. I call it almost like horizontal advice. The whole deal when I became Sugar, I realized, like, “Listen – I’m not sitting up here on a mountaintop telling you how to live. I’m right here on the same level as you. We’re both just down here on the earth, you know? And we’re talking.” And so, in so many ways, this idea of her offering comfort when she wants to receive it is everything that I try to do with Sugar. The way I tell stories about my life in the form of my advice — that’s why I do it. I say, “Listen — okay, you think you’re alone or you’re the only person that’s struggling in this way or your bewilderment. Let me tell you, I’ve been there, too, and here’s what sense I made of that. Or maybe it’s helpful for you to see what I did or what mistakes I made or how I triumphed.” Right? So I think Liz really captured beautifully the spirit of that horizontal advice, if you will, in that line.

I love that. Horizontal advice. I’m gonna start using that. I think there’s a really beautiful and satisfying ending, but as someone who loves the show and would love to see it go on for, you know, SVU levels of length — 20 more seasons — if there were to be a Season 2, what kind of things would you want to explore?

I hope there’s a Season 2 because I do think that there’s so much more story to tell. I guess I should know the number of columns in the book…but there are a whole lot of columns in the book, and of course, we could only do a handful of them this season. In this show, I should say. And I think that there are rich stories that need to be told and that we can keep telling them if the powers that be demand it.

Image via Hulu

Is there one particular column that you wish you could have integrated but that you didn’t get the chance to this season?

That was the whole thing from the beginning. We knew this was going to be one of your “kill your darlings” experiences. We can’t have every column in the show. You just can’t fit it into eight episodes. And so we had to choose the ones that really took our direction from the trajectory of Clare’s life. You know, what was Kathryn’s character grappling with? What was she up against? What was she struggling with? And then those things were, in part, what informed us about which columns to choose. Way back when I first started writing the Sugar column, I was like, “Listen — I don’t want this to be a column that’s just about sex and love and romance. I want this to be a column about everything.” So I give advice about money problems, about family problems, about whether you should move to Paris or not with your boyfriend. I did that on the podcast, not in the book. Which, the answer is yes – you should always move to Paris with anyone. Even if it turns out, you know, to be a mistake. You will have moved to Paris, okay? So I wanted there to be like a topical range, and so we always had a rich field to draw on, and there were many times that we wanted to use this column or that column, and then we were like, “No. We just can’t right now.”

Finally, I know that you’ve been asked a lot what advice you would give your younger self, but I kind of want to flip the script and ask, if you could tell your future 70- or 80-year-old self something, what would you want to tell her?

Oh my god. Oh, what would I want to tell her? What would I want to tell her? Okay, I’m gonna tell my 70-year-old self that I’m sorry that my 54-year-old self — me right now — didn’t do yoga as often as I know I should.

That’s a wonderful one. And you know what? I think my 26-year-old self is probably gonna say the same thing.

[Laughs] Get to yoga! I do it occasionally, but I need to be more consistent, and maybe, by the time I’m 70, I will be.

All episodes of Tiny Beautiful Things will be available to stream on Hulu April 7.