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Alison Herman
TV Critic
aherman2006 See All
Courtesy of Apple TV SPOILER ALERT: The following article contains plot details from “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!,” the Season 1 finale of “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
The curse was coming from inside the house.
Over the 10-episode first season of “Widow’s Bay,” the horror-comedy hybrid that’s become a breakout hit for Apple TV, Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) has gone from denying there’s anything off about the namesake town he leads as mayor to frantically seeking a cure for its increasingly undeniable chaos. The island village is beset by sea hags, serial killers, creepy clowns and other evils that interfere with Tom’s dream of turning Widow’s Bay into a Martha’s Vineyard-like tourist destination. Together with his assistant Patricia (Kate O’Flynn) and true believer Wyck (Stephen Root), Tom discovers the off vibes originate with a pact between town founder Richard Warren (Hamish Linklater) and the demonic force that inhabits the island. The covenant — including troublesome terms like those born on the island being unable to leave on pain of death — only ends when Warren’s bloodline does, too.
For most of the season’s final episode, “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Time!,” Tom believes Warren’s last living descendant is Tom’s kindhearted, elderly secretary Ruth (K Callan). As almost everyone else in Widow’s Bay takes shelter from a storm that’s wreaking havoc and even sucking some residents into the sky, Tom goes to Ruth’s house and weighs a terrible moral dilemma. Ruth doesn’t help matters by making him tea, showing off her very full calendar or insisting she wouldn’t pull the lever in the famous Trolley Problem scenario, which she’s unaware her guest is working through at that very moment.
Luckily for Ruth and unluckily for pretty much everyone else, most especially Tom, she isn’t the end of Richard Warren’s bloodline. To Tom’s evident horror, as embodied by the ever-capable Rhys, Ruth reveals that she had a secret child from an adulterous affair — and that said child grew up to be Tom’s late wife, the mother of their son Evan (Kingston Rumi Southwick). Tom’s North Star throughout the season has been keeping Evan safe; the whole point of attracting tourism to Widow’s Bay was to bring the world to Evan rather than roll the dice on sending Evan out into the world.
Ultimately, Sheriff Bechir (Kevin Carroll) does what Tom can’t bring himself to and shoots Ruth (seemingly non-fatally) in the name of his own newborn child. But his and Tom’s interests no longer align: Tom reveals that Ruth isn’t the final descendant, yet keeps Evan’s true identity secret for obvious, if arguably selfish, reasons. In the season’s closing moments, the last we’ll spend on the island until a recently announced Season 2, the storm has abated, but Tom hears church bells that act as a reminder the covenant is still very much in effect while Evan waits in the car.
“I just love the fact that it’s rooted in something so universal and so deep and something relatable,” Rhys tells Variety of “Widow’s Bay,” which the actor executive produced alongside creator Katie Dippold and lead director Hiro Murai. “You can understand that motivation, as opposed to running away from a monster.” Read on for our full conversation, including what Rhys hopes to see in Season 2 and the scene that almost made him break.
Courtesy of Apple TV Horror is a genre people seem to either really gravitate to or really avoid, with very little in between. In your own life, where do you stand on horror? Oh, I love horror. I love when horror — well, actually, no. I was going to try and be pretentious, but the truth is, I love every kind of horror. I was raised in the ‘80s on a very specific genre of horror, the early Stephen King stuff: “Carrie,” “Children of the Corn,” “Salem’s Lot.” Then psychological horror, even some of the slasher stuff, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” I did it all as a kid.
I have discovered with “Widow’s Bay” that the horror world is a very specific and unique world, and a very powerful one, a very buoyant one, which is incredible. But to go back to your question, as a divide — what’s interesting is, some people have gone, “I’ve heard your show’s horror. I’m not into horror.” So I try and go, “Ehhh, have a look.” What Katie says is, “I’m interested in all types of horror.” With Patricia, with Kate O’Flynn’s character, she says, “I want to explore social horror.” There’s a number of different ways to skin a horrific cat.
You’ve said the tonal mix Katie was going for was right on the page from the start. But when you first started talking to her about his project, what did she share with you about what her vision for this show was?She laid out what the arc was for Tom, and as great writers do, told a story. I think when it’s presented in that way, it’s a lot more engaging, especially the weight of the human element. He’s a father who wants the best for his son, is struggling and finds out that everything he’s working towards, at the very end, is turned on its head. So in that respect it became a very human story for me. I was like, “Oh, that’s fantastic.” And everything else in between is kind of beautiful padding that can make it sing or pop and explode when or if need be.
Then Hiro, when I said, “What’s the tone?” He’s like, “Don’t worry about the tone! Your job isn’t to worry about a tone.” He was like, “I’ll do the tone.” He said, “We create a nice real world with real people, with real back stories, and you play it for real, and that’s it. Tone comes from other things. So you’re never going to play jokes, or horror. You just play the reality of it.” That’s what I always say and believe too: That’s what will hold an audience, not the fireworks that go around it.
One of the most interesting choices the show makes is that it could go in a sort of “X-Files” direction, where you never know for sure if this is real. But very early, we know the “Widow’s Bay” curse is real. I was curious what you feel like that adds to the show.What I love is in Episode 2 — the [one with the] clown — there’s a moment that makes Tom doubt. He watches himself back on the security camera and goes “Wait a minute.” It does a number of things: it fucks with his head, and also kind of reassures him that this is nothing, but at the same time unnerves him. It serves several masters, that moment. I thought it was very clever. It’s good, in a way, because yes, you tell the audience very early, “This is real,” and you still have the doubting Thomas at its center going, “No, it’s not real, I’m gonna make sure it’s not real, I’m gonna say it’s not real.” It’s the unveiling of it for Tom, where he goes, “Oh my God, we’re in trouble. This is real.”
One of the many things I love about your performance in the show is that you’re tasked with maintaining a straight face as people around you do and say some wild things. Were there any particular scenes where it was hard not to break?99% of them. When you have people like Stephen Root, Kate O’Flynn, Jeff Hiller, Dale Dickey, — you don’t stand a chance. Neil Casey, oh my God, it was break central. It was hard. And also, they’re so good at improv that sometimes they’ll throw in a bomb, and you’re just like, “Oh well, I don’t stand a chance on that one,” and you’re gone. I struggled through most of it, trying not to laugh. It was a very funny show to make. We had a few reprimand moments from the directors, like, “Guys, please focus.”
The Dale Dickey scene where Rosemary’s stringing you along while she’s explaining the lineage…Oh my God. I saw that early on, that script, and I said to Katie Dippold, “Give this to Dale Dickey now, because she will need weeks to learn this.” And God bless her, she came in and nailed that. That’s where the show lives best: when it’s grounded in a real way, but people are saying things like “lesbian, lesbian, dead baby.” Where you’re just like, “Fuck me.” My first day with Stephen Root was when he sang that song. [crooning] “AWOOOOOO.” That was my first scene with Stephen Root! And no one had told me that the song begins with “AWOOOOOO.” I was like, “Give me a warning!”
I feel like Kate O’Flynn, in particular, has been a real revelation to stateside audiences. Can you talk a little bit about working with her as a scene partner?It’s just so smart, the way Katie’s mapped it. Episodes 4 and 8, you follow her, and the fleshing out of her backstory and her private life just elevates everything. Katie said early on that it’s a real sibling dynamic between [Tom and Patricia], that the two need each other, love each other, drive each other fucking nuts, have the same goals but wildly different opinions. It’s magic to play, really. But God, I hate her sometimes, because she can corpse me with a look.
Another task you’re given a lot on this show is slapstick. The boat pratfall, the picture frame…That was a hard thing to shoot.
That one looked stressful!More so because we just kept laughing while doing it. Sometimes you become aware, and then that’s bad, and other times you’re having so much fun, you just laugh. And then Paul Marini, the stunt coordinator, was always like, “Stop! Stop! You’re meant to stop at that point!” I was like, “I was enjoying it too much.” I just had so much fun doing it. I grew up watching Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin. It’s an homage to them.
In terms of the finale, after all the comedy that you get to play, most of your scenes in this episode are just these two-hander conversations. And your character is in such agony.Oh my God. We shot that finale over days. I remember turning to Hiro like, “I signed up for a comedy!” Because I am exhausted. It’s so dense. As comedic as those moments are for K, when she’s saying, “Oh, he made a pass at me,” Tom’s journey in that scene, that big scene, is just the revelation that’s so overwhelming. You obviously go and do it for real. It’s exhausting to play, but incredible. It’s like a steak at every turn.
The message that the scene arrives at, where Ruth is saying, “Life is horrible, and you just need to learn to accept it” — I found it quite moving, and very unusual. How did that theme resonate with you?It’s just how athletic the script is in its turns. It’s kind of gymnastic sometimes. You have massive moments, you know, real human condition — like “Hamlet.” She’ll nail you with a line. And then the next minute, you’re falling over with a picture. You just hope you can be deft enough to make the leaps, because it’s everything you’d ever want in a script, but it’s dexterous, too. The writing was incredible.
The main takeaway is, of course, what Tom learns about Evan, and how that squares with his primary motivation of protecting his son. As a parent yourself, did you resonate with that fear and anxiety?I just love the fact that it’s rooted in something so universal and so deep and something relatable. Whether you care for your offspring, you care for someone. You can understand that motivation, as opposed to running away from a monster. If that is the through line of the piece, then everything else is magnified, which is fantastic.
After the show ramps up in scale over the course of the season, the finale is pretty limited.That’s kind of what I loved about it. That it all takes place in two rooms — there’s the basement underground and K’s little house. I just thought the set design, what they did was incredible. The crochet kits everywhere. The details. It was always gold. But yeah, it’s so shrewd to go from the big fireworks of an episode set 300 years ago to all of a sudden, it’s ultimately, I think, what we always want, which is about two people talking about the human condition.
It also leaves some gaps — we don’t see what happens between the end of the storm and Tom and Evan in the car. Do you have any sense, just in your own head, of what their first conversation after Tom learns Evan’s true identity looked like?I talked it through with Katie: “In this moment, where am I with him?” And she’s like, “Well, you have the fear upon you, because everything you wanted is now times a thousand. A million.” It’s more a whirl of like, “How am I going to navigate this now?” When seemingly one thing is now exponentially, a trillion times worse.
What’s fantastic is that for a horror, those are the real horrific moments. As scary as the man at the door is for Patricia, the ringing of the bell to me was so ominous. [Shivers] Oh, I got it now! I just remember thinking, “Oh, that is so creepy.” As a parent, as a human, you just go, “Oh God.”
The show is now renewed for a Season 2. Do you have anything that you would like to see, or are excited to see play out?I don’t. I’ve been asked, “What do you think?” And I said, “I have no idea how this is going to unfold!” This is why I don’t write, because I’m like, “What are they gonna do?” Not just me — Kevin Carroll’s character with his child. Everyone! What they’ve done is loaded the bases, to use an American analogy I know nothing of. Everyone has a high stakes cliffhanger. I don’t know how they’re gonna deal with their food, let alone Tom! It’s gonna be crazy.
There’s also, what subgenres of horror are next?Right, and also: what’s the evolution of the island as a monster? Like, cracks in the earth? A volcano? A tsunami? I keep going to Dippold like, “WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN?!?!” She’s like, “I’m not gonna tell an actor.”
Now that the show is out there, what kind of responses have you gotten?Touching on what I said earlier, those people who kind of go, “I don’t really like horror, but I like this.” You go, “I know, it’s not really a straight horror, either.” What I’ve enjoyed the most is that people say it’s not like anything they’ve seen, and that’s everything you could ever wish for. Because in an age where we have seemingly saturated everything, for people to say that — people go, “It’s a bit ‘Northern Exposure,’ a little ‘Parks and Rec,’ kind of ‘Twin Peaks.’” There’s no one who’s gone, “It’s this.” It is beautifully its own beast, and I’m very happy about that.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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