“Monarch” raised a few eyebrows Tuesday night when the show’s lead character Dottie Roman, a country queen who heads country music's first family, is diagnosed with cancer and only has months to live. Dottie takes her life, but not before she planned her funeral.

Naomi Judd, one half of Country Music Hall of Fame duo The Judds, died by suicide in her bedroom last spring. Like Susan Sarandon’s character on “Monarch,” she pre-planned her funeral — and the Judds' hit "Love Can Build a Bridge" was performed at Judd's funeral as well as at Sarandon’s Dottie Roman’s farewell on Monarch.

The Judds, which also include Naomi’s daughter Wynonna, had planned a final tour and a documentary with music industry veteran Jason Owen when Naomi Judd died. Owen is an executive producer on Monarch. He says that the similarities are purely coincidence and that Sarandon's “Monarch” scenes were filmed months before Judd's death.

"What feels like art imitating life is really just one of the strangest, saddest, eeriest coincidences I've seen," Owen tells PEOPLE.

FOX gave an initial script commitment to the drama in 2019, and the story was finalized two years before Judd's death. The network officially ordered the series in May of 2021. The cast started production by September and finished shooting the first few episodes that fall. Naomi Judd hadn't seen the episodes, nor was she or her family aware of the plotline before she died in April of 2022.

Creator Melissa London Hilfers and Owen’s idea for the funeral was inspired by the high profile funerals for Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette and George Jones. Since Dottie is the show’s Queen of Country Music, he wanted her funeral scene to mimic those of country music’s departed giants.

"They're icons, and they deserve these big celebrations of life," he says. "That's where we got the idea for the over-the-top funeral."

Owen chose "Love Can Build a Bridge" for Dottie’s funeral scene as he had been working on The Judds tour and wanted to remind people of their music. He also wanted a song that would allow Dottie and her sister, Nellie, to sing together. 

"The Judds are literally my favorite of all time," he says. "I was producing their whole tour, and they had their last performance, which was 'Love Can Build a Bridge' on CMT. Then the tragic events start to unfold. It's just another unbelievable coincidence. But it's also something I care deeply about — what Wynonna and the family thought."

"Monarch" airs at 9 p.m. ET Tuesdays on FOX.