“Dear Sugar, how do I respectfully take ownership of a source of material that was created by another writer and has a community of admirers who feel a really strong sense of connection to the work?” It was the question Liz Tigelaar, a writer and producer whose credits include “Little Fires Everywhere” and “Casual,” wishes she could have posed as she set out to adapt a book of essays based on Cheryl Strayed’s beloved online advice column.

Strayed began writing the column under the pseudonym “Dear Sugar” more than a decade ago when she was a struggling writer. She developed a loyal following by dispensing insightful and compassionate guidance on life’s hard, messy and heartbreaking conundrums by mining her own experiences. They were the basis for the 2012 collection of essays “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life From Dear Sugar.” (She later revived the column as a podcast and, more recently, as a newsletter.)

In the new Hulu series, titled “Tiny Beautiful Things,” Tigelaar avoided the temptation of having the letter writers be a character in each episode in orbit of its protagonist, Clare Pierce, played by Kathryn Hahn in the present and Sarah Pidgeon in the past, choosing instead to build out the memoir element of the essays.

“I’m almost less curious about how she finds the advice in the present day, externally,” says Tigelaar, a self-described Strayed super fan. “How does she find the advice inside of her from what she’s already gone through? And how do we bring those stories to the front? It ended up being constructed where maybe the letter writer didn’t need to appear. “

Q: Before we fully get into things, can we just start by talking about the wonder that is Kathryn Hahn?

A: I was watching somebody inhabit a character at the highest level; every ad lib, every way, she did it a little differently. This was a part that was ambitious with a lot to navigate, and to see somebody giving such a gutsy performance and being so unafraid was such a joy. I mean, when she lays on the ground in a scene, and she’s just like, “I am not OK” in a way only she can — I mean, I think every woman gets that.

Q: You’re telling a version of Cheryl Strayed’s story, but you’ve named the protagonist Clare Pierce. What prompted that decision?

A: We talked a lot about that. In “Wild,” Reese Witherspoon played Cheryl Strayed. (Witherspoon, who worked with Tigelaar on “Little Fires Everywhere,” is an executive producer on the series.) And we really wanted the freedom. Cheryl is Clare’s age living a version of Clare’s life. So am I. We didn’t want to imply that this was autobiographical. We’re depicting Cheryl’s marriage now, Cheryl’s children now. I named her Clare and we started to think of the version of her. It was like: This is Cheryl had she not hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, this is Cheryl had she not become that writer that she and her mother believed that she could be. And it was funny because after I named her Clare, Cheryl said, “I was Claire in ‘Torch.’” “Torch” was a fictionalized version of Cheryl without the PCT. I read it right after “Wild.” I had not remembered that she was Claire. But I love that she was Claire there and Clare here.

Q: Nia Vardalos adapted the book for the stage and she said that the material was life-changing for her. Did it feed something in you at the right time?

A: I’ve basically spent a year not only doing something that was, to me — especially for a half-hour series — a very narratively ambitious story and a very structurally ambitious story. And not knowing, like, are people going to get it? Are people going to like it? Or is it too ambitious with all of these things? But to do this huge creative endeavor for this person who I love, whose stories have saved me, and to do it beside that person encouraging you the whole time? Who could be in better hands?

Q: Tell me more about that. In addition to having the book as a resource, what was the collaboration like with Cheryl?

A: In the very beginning, she said, “Could I come into the writers room? Can I be a part of it?” And I was like, “Absolutely!” And at first I told the writers, “Cheryl Strayed is going to be in the writers room.” And I think some people were a little bit trepidatious, like, “The author is going to be there, are we going to be able to really dissect it?” And it was not like that. She has these rich stories and then she has these rich stories within those stories. We optioned an essay of hers called “The Love of My Life,” which was the foundation of Episode 5, this flashback story of how she and her mom went to college together and her mom died on spring break their senior year. So we mined so much of her writing and experience as a writer.

Q: How did you decide which questions to include in the show to drive the narrative?

A: That was hard because there were so many good ones. I knew “Tiny Beautiful Things” had to be the first one. I knew “Like an Iron Bell” was the finale because I was pretty sure I wanted to tell the beginning, the middle and the end of her mother’s life. And then I knew I wanted to jump around and not be quite so linear. I tried to hold to the idea that it was OK to not know exactly where you were in the timeline, and that what you just needed to experience was the story of that episode and how it related to the letter in the present. But I think there were just iconic letters — “The Ghost Ship That Didn’t Carry Us” was a for-sure, the woman who writes in about her daughter in the pediatric NICU, and this question of faith felt so important. We tried to really hit those iconic ones.