Matthew Rhys on the Widow’s Bay Scene That Really Freaked Him Out

“I found Widow's Bay so much harder than The Americans to do.”

Anyone who has watched Matthew Rhys on Apple TV’s new horror-comedy series can see why he feels that way — despite having played a Russian spy who trafficked in espionage and murder for six seasons on the acclaimed FX drama, for which he won an Emmy in 2018. Widow’s Bay — which premiered April 29 and has become a sleeper hit for the streamer — casts Rhys as Tom Loftis, the mayor of a fictional (and cursed) New England island town. When Tom isn’t struggling to attract tourist dollars, he’s protecting his rebellious teenage son (Kingston Rumi Southwick) and fellow island residents from mysterious and deadly supernatural forces.

As Tom — who, according to Rhys, intentionally shares personality traits with the problematic mayor from the actor's favorite movie, Jaws — Rhys walks a tricky tonal tightrope between Stephen King and Schitt’s Creek. From surviving a bad acid trip to trying to outswim a very terrifying Sea Hag, Rhys’s considerable acting skills are pushed to their limits — not just between episodes, but often from scene to scene. Recalling the shoot, Widow’s Bay creator and showrunner Katie Dippold marvels at his ability to negotiate the role’s demands — pivoting from physical comedy one minute to bone-deep terror the next.

"I know I’m biased, but I honestly think he's the greatest actor of all time," Dippold tells the Television Academy. "Matthew doesn't have to say anything, but you just see it all in his eyes."

Rhys’s ocular acting gets a workout in the aforementioned Sea Hag episode, "The Inaugural Swim." Directed by Hiro Murai (The Bear), "Swim" finds a panicking Tom participating in the titular island tradition when he spies the top of the Sea Hag’s head crest the water like a shark fin before the submerged entity chases Tom back to shore. While filming the sequence, Rhys’s state of mind mirrored his character’s.

"Shooting that sequence was the only time during the whole shoot where I got genuinely freaked out, because I just had that whole shark thing [from Jaws] going on in my head," says Rhys, a super-fan of the iconic 1975 blockbuster. "You’re in deep water, and the dive boats are far away. And you’re just like — I’m starting to freak myself out. I'm asking the divers, ‘Do sharks come into Massachusetts?’ And they're like, ‘Oh, yeah.' And I was like, ‘Do Great Whites come in?’ They're like, ‘Oh, yeah, but they won’t eat you — they probably won’t eat you — but they definitely come in.’ And that's when I went, ‘Oh, fuck.’”

Tom (and Rhys) survived the potentially shark-infested waters, but not before the Sea Hag scratches his skin, leaving a mark that allows her to stalk him back to his home. Inside, Tom is helpless in his recliner when she mounts him. He manages to free himself from the Hag’s clutches by launching her from the chair, which Rhys explains required some ingenuity from the practical-effects crew.

"That was me in the chair and a stuntwoman dressed as the Hag being launched by a pneumatic, hydraulically powered La-Z-Boy that they built," Rhys says. "This thing could fucking launch a boulder. And God bless that stuntwoman, she launched herself off it several times."

"I know Hiro spent a lot of time thinking about the mechanics of that sequence, and how exactly that [chair] was going to work," adds Dippold. “And with the DP, Christian Sprenger, and production design and the stunt department helping build that sequence, it was a real to-do for that one moment."

For Dippold, this sequence — equal parts scary and hilarious — encapsulates the tone that she was aiming for when she wrote Widow’s Bay as a spec script years ago. "One of my favorite things about the show is that it really focuses on being grounded," she says. "With that scene, despite something as ridiculous as that, you can buy what's happening."

Audiences are buying it, as well, judging from reactions on social media. Fans seem especially fond of the detailed world-building Dippold and her creative partners devised, as seen in the first season’s second episode, "Lodging," also directed by Murai. While Tom stays, alone, at the island’s haunted inn to prove to locals that (ironically) the place isn’t haunted, he discovers a shelf full of some unique games to pass the time. One is an ominous card game simply called “Run.” The other is a board game called “Teeth.” When Tom opens the game, he doesn’t find instructions or playing pieces inside. Instead, there is only a pair of pilers. (The showrunner hopes eagle-eyed viewers spot a "blink and you miss it" reveal of another in-world game, "She Shouldn’t Have Said That.")

The games, especially "Teeth," proved integral to Dippold and her fellow writers’ efforts to ground the show’s horrific and comedic elements in a way that made the fake town they occur in feel real. "That was one of my favorite days in the writers’ room," she recalls. "We had a blast pitching different games, like ‘Teeth,’ that could be there. We probably pitched like 50 games, but ‘Teeth’ really got me. For a while, in addition to pliers, we also had a little metal cup for the teeth to go in. So, it was a lot of discussion of — is it pliers plus metal cup? Or just pliers? It was a lot of fun getting into the details."

Dippold and Rhys are glad to see fans’ positive response to the details that go into making something like "Teeth," and how those specifics flesh out the in-world reality of an imagined town that is brand new to audiences but has, within the story, existed for centuries. How much more of that story they will get to tell remains to be seen; as of press time, a second season of Widow’s Bay has yet to be announced. But both the show’s creator and lead actor feel that the world they have helped build is one designed to sustain multiple seasons.

"When I first read the [pilot] script, it was almost a disservice to call it a horror-comedy," Rhys says. "What Katie and the writers and the entire crew have done is, they’ve built a place with a history and characters you cannot get anywhere else on television. There is a deep bench of stories to be told about this town, about these people."

"My dream is that the audience just wants to lean in more and more,” Dippold says. "I always wanted this place to feel like a real world that I could take a ferry to and get lost in, and explore all the little terrifying nooks and crannies. I would be dead after a week, but that's the dream."

Widow’s Bay is now streaming on Apple TV.