Rachel Bloom, the "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" creator and star, is moving into documentary production with a new PBS series that confronts mortality head-on. "How We Grieve," produced by Bloom and directed by siblings Meghan and Justin Ross, examines how people process death anxiety and the cultural silence surrounding end-of-life conversations.
The Ross siblings bring personal stakes to the project. Their documentary explores grief through the lens of their own Arab family, unpacking why death remains taboo in their community and many others. Rather than treating the subject as purely clinical, the filmmakers investigate the emotional architecture beneath our collective avoidance of mortality.
Bloom's involvement signals the growing appetite for documentary work that tackles emotional complexity with nuance. The "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" alum has spent years mining psychological terrain through her scripted work. This shift to producing documentary lets her expand that sensibility into non-fiction storytelling about universal human experiences.
PBS's investment in the project reflects the network's continued commitment to intimate, character-driven documentaries. The series arrives at a moment when conversations about death, grief, and legacy have gained cultural traction, partly accelerated by pandemic-related losses that forced collective reckoning with mortality.
The Ross brothers' previous work demonstrates their ability to blend personal narrative with broader social observation. "How We Grieve" positions death not as an isolated trauma but as a shared experience shaped by cultural norms, family dynamics, and individual psychology. By centering an Arab family's relationship to grief, the series promises to expand mainstream television's representation of how different communities process loss.
Rather than offering platitudes or step-by-step grief frameworks, the documentary appears designed to normalize conversations that most families avoid until crisis forces them. In that sense, the series functions as both intimate family portrait and public health intervention. Bloom's involvement brings star power to a subject that typically receives less attention than entertainment content, potentially reaching audiences who might otherwise skip documentaries about death and dying.