Connie Britton Laughs About Her First Paid Acting Gig: Getting Stabbed at Murder Mystery Dinners

Connie Britton has carved out a very successful acting career playing memorably complex and challenging characters.

Before she was a five-time Emmy nominee, however, The White Lotus star made her mark (and first acting dollars) as part of a murder mystery troupe in New York City.

"We would travel to all kinds of places in and around New York City, upstate New York, at Elk's Lodges, church basements, and they'd have a murder mystery dinner," Britton, 55, tells PEOPLE in the latest issue. "I would get paid $50 with a troupe of murder mystery people and we would go put on murder mysteries."

Britton says she gained a lot of experience pretend-dying in front of an audience.

"Usually I played the girl [who has] to integrate into whatever the environment is, whatever the dinner is, and then you're sitting at dinner and I would have to sneak something into my mouth," she recalls with a laugh. "And then I would start foaming at the mouth and fall over and die. I usually played that. But then eventually, I upgraded to getting stabbed in the back. That was exciting."

Sophy Holland

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The Friday Night Lights and Nashville alum says that early experience of performing with a group of like-minded creatives is still one of her favorite parts of being an actor.

"Really my favorite part of what I get to do for a living is the fact that I get to collaborate in such an incredible way with writers, directors, cast members and crew members," she says, pointing to a recent example of her ideal collaborative environment: being quarantined in the hotel where they filmed the hit HBO series The White Lotus with her fellow cast and crew.

"The teamwork of [the job] is what I love and so that was really heightened on this," she explains. "We all felt really fortunate to be there and bonded very quickly. We did spend time together [outside of filming] because we were [COVID] testing so much and we were in this bubble. We would have dinners together and the thing I felt was most sacred — if we wrapped [filming] in time, our goal was to meet at the beach and watch the sunset. And it was so wonderful."

Sophy Holland Connie Britton

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Britton says she loved digging into her overworked matriarch/out-of-touch CEO character's quirks, several of which involved timely, real-world issues.

"It was a great opportunity to be able to look long and hard at what it is to be a white woman who has a sense of privilege and a sense of entitlement and the blinders that she put in place to protect those values for herself," she says.

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Sophy Holland

Looking ahead to the Emmys — for which Britton is nominated for outstanding supporting actress in a limited or anthology series or movie alongside her Lotus costars Jennifer Coolidge, Natasha Rothwell, Alexandra Daddario and Sydney Sweeney — the star says she still can't believe the show received as much recognition as it did.

"I've never been a part of something that got 20 Emmy nominations and it feels so right and I'm so happy about it," she says. "I think it really honors the unusual experience that we all had, and the deep collaboration that we all had."

For more on Connie Britton and this year's Emmy portfolio, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

The 74th Primetime Emmy Awards will be broadcast live on Monday, Sept. 12 at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.