Gina Rodriguez 'Died a Little Bit Inside' When Kevin Bacon Said He 'Loved' Her: 'Thought I Played It So Super Cool' (Exclusive)

Bacon is an executive producer on 'Lucky 13', the ABC game show Rodriguez is co-hosting with Shaquille O'Neal

Gina Rodriguez's life has officially been made.

The actress has added a new title to her resume as she and Shaquille O'Neal joined forces to host ABC's new game show, Lucky 13, and while the hosting gig alone is something she "never in a million years" thought she'd do, it's brought her closer than she imagined to the one and only Kevin Bacon.

"I've only met him once, and I thought I played it so super cool," Rodriguez, 40, tells PEOPLE of meeting the star, who is an executive producer on the game show.

"And then we shot the episode and he came out and I was like, 'I'm going to go and hug this man.' I'm like, 'Now's my chance. I'm just going to walk up to him and I'm going to hug him,'" she adds.

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In a clip posted on the game show's Instagram last month after Bacon, 66, stopped by, he raved about Rodriguez and O'Neal, 52, who he said are "the perfect people to be hosting this show."

More notably, Bacon also said "I love Gina Rodriguez" in the clip, and she admits, "When he said he loved me, yeah, I died a little bit inside. Or I came alive — I came alive a little bit more inside."

Now that she's heard those magic words from the Hollywood legend, she can die happy. "I think I'm done. It's a wrap now," she says.

The Not Dead Yet star praises Bacon, who she says is "so tremendous as an artist" and "so chill as a human being," which she was pleasantly surprised by. She adds, "Obviously, that's always my favorite win, is when you meet somebody and you're like, 'Oh, thank you for understanding that you're a human being, and everybody poops.'"

"I just love when other actors remember that, and they are that way, and they understand that all of this is a really big show and a play and a game, and human life matters more. And that's Kevin."

She notes that the same can be said of her co-host. "I mean, it's the same as Shaq. They're both just such down-to-earth human beings."

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Lucky 13 challenges its contestants to answer 13 true-or-false trivia questions, but with a cunning twist: they must accurately predict how many of the questions they answered correctly in order to take home the $1 million jackpot.

Rodriguez says it was a "super departure to be a host," but she's "in the era of my life of just trying new things, doing things outside of the box."

It helps, too, that she's "obsessed with trivia."

"When they approached me, I played the game and I was like, 'This s--- is fun. Oh my God, this is so fun.' And I'm not good at trivia, but I love it. So to me, this is the everyman's trivia," she says of the game show's setup.

"And no s--- on Jeopardy!, but when I watch Jeopardy!, I'm like, 'I don't know 90% of these questions. And it's making me feel like such an a--hole, so I'm going to stop watching this,'" she admits. "But for Lucky 13, it's like, it's not only just fun trivia that's all across the board, all over the place, from pop culture to very academic, but it's more about knowing yourself."

The Jane the Virgin alum is crossing her fingers that she and O'Neal will be back for more after season 1.

"I hope I get to do Lucky 13 again, because it was so wonderful," she says. "And it opened me up to things I never thought I would ever do, and that's a tremendous gift, because I would never have chosen that. And here I am doing things that are spreading my wings, giving me skill sets I'd never thought I would own or even have the opportunity to gain. And so it was really rad."

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Lucky 13 airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and can be streamed on Hulu.

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