In the middle of a hefty two-hour panel that marked Apple TV's first Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con, the cast and creators of Widow's Bay popped in to reflect on the show's breakout success, which includes 19 recent Emmy nominations. "Dale, I think you had the best reaction," series creator Katie Dippold said to Dale Dickey, who earned one of those Emmy nods for Supporting Actress as Rosemary. "'Dear God in heaven, what the hell just happened,'" Dickey recalled.
Joining Dippold and Dickey on the stage was director Hiro Murai, Stephen Root (Wyck), Jeff Hiller (Dale), K Callan (Ruth), Kevin Carroll (Bashir), and Kingston Rooney Southwick (Evan). (Sadly, no Kate O'Flynn, who plays the fan favorite city hall aide Patricia.)
"It’s amazing it became a watercolor show," Root said, reacting to a question from the moderator, Happy Sad Confused podcast host Josh Horowitz, about the show building up to a zeitgeist-y must-watch. "The tone for he show is everything," he said not long after when they were asked about the series' blend of horror and comedy. "If you get the tone of the show, you’re gonna get the show."
"I feel like every time I did something wrong, they’d say ‘don’t do that,’ and that was a good guardrail," Hiller (half) joked about keeping that sensibility in check.
"I go back to initial conviction — Katie would be like, ‘I know this sounds psychotic, but I would stay at that haunted inn. I would want to get a coffee at that diner," Murai said regarding the grounded feeling of the series despite the terrors of the island. "It should be off-putting to be there, but there’s an inherent coziness. You love this place."
"I would like to be killed there," Dippold said to an appreciative audience.
The cast was asked about each of their characters. Root said that he had "played a lot of heavies" in his life but felt that he could bring "some humanity" to the salty townie Wyck. "You have to see how tirelessly he’s trying to protect the people on the island," he said. "I love being myself a little more in this role than in a lot of other roles I've done. I think it’s about kindness, it really is."
As for Carroll, who plays the exhausted town sheriff whose wife goes into labor during the harrowing season finale, he said the question for his character Bashir is "does he want to be sheriff" of the island? "I think so," Carroll (unexpectedly, to be honest) said. "He's fighting tof his child. What parent in here wou'dnt go to the nth degree for the sake of their children?"
Another major reveal at the end of the first season was an answer to a mystery about how K Callan's Ruth is related to both the founding of the island and Tom and his son Evan. "I knew nothing," Callan said when asked about how clued in she was to Ruth's role. "I got to read the pilot and that was it. I had no idea what Ruth’s journey was going to be. I just put my life in Katie and Hiro’s hand, and thank goodness."
Southwick talked about the importance of the rocky father-son relationship between Evan and Matthew Rhys' Tom. "I think the relationship is so great, because we keep a lot of secrets from each other, and I think that's what kind of keeps us honest," he said. "Certain things that I can do, he can't say that I can't do, because he's doing things that he shouldn't be doing either."
Toward the end of the Widow's Bay time slot, Dickey pulled up a projector screen, recreating a now-iconic scene where Rosemary goes over her geneological findings for the Tom, Patricia, Wyck trio to put an end to the island's bloodlust, that had an old newspaper headline about cannibalism. “It started with cannibalism... right, mayor?" Dickey said, before the screens cut to a live video call from Rhys.
"No, no, you know we don’t talk about cannibalism," joked Rhys, who acknowledged that his mayor is maybe more enthusiastic about managing the island than he is actually proficient at it. "I think his effectiveness would be down to the island to judge," he said. "I think his enthusiasm is without question. He wants the very best for the islandand those who live upon it."
Rhys was also asked about finding the slapstick physicality of his performance as Tom ("I didn’t find anything, Josh, that’s how I live my life") and specifically in Episode 5 as a high-strung, straight-laced goverment leader who happened to take a dose of diabolical-looking mushrooms in Episode 5. "You know, about three to four bottles of good chablis will get you to that place. Which is to be encouraged at times," Rhys said. "It was a lot of fun. YouTube is a great provider these days for acting. I shamelessly copied people enjoying themselves, and that to me was the mushroom trip."
After hanging up with Rhys, Horowitz asked what was most fun to see people obsessing over in the show. "I’m so happy the genealogy scene seemed to land with people," Dippold said about Season 1's penultiamte episode where Rosemary runs down the lengthy ancestry of island founder Richard Warren. "Dale Dickey here memorized that entire thing. I remember the projector screen... I remember it was upside down on the screen so she couldn’t even really use it, she had to to use her mind. Matthew pulled me aside and said, ‘Do you hate Dale Dickey?’"
The Apple TV panel wasn't Widow's Bay's only presence at Comic-Con. At the Showrunners on Showrunning panel Friday afternoon that Dippold participated in alongside Damon Lindelof (Lanterns, Lost) and her former Parks and Recreation boss Greg Daniels (King of the Hill, The Office), the Widow's Bay creator said that she learned the show had been renewed not long before it "became official." She added that the writer's room had started this week and would be active for the next 20 weeks. "The goal is filming early next year."
Other notable reveals from Apple TV's Hall H panel:
Apple TV trotted out a slew of announcements for its first Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday afternoon, including a look at the upcoming second season of Dark Matter, the new Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branaugh movie Mayday, and the back half of SIlo Season 3.
We saw an unexpected release date reveal for its 10-episode Neuromancer series in early 2027. The latest trailer was introduced via video message from its lead Callum Turner, and showunner/executive producer Graham Roland talked about why now was the perfect time to adapt William Gibson's seminal cyperpunk novel.
Hall H got a look at the high-octane trailer for the Matchbox movie (across multiple screens), along with a bit-heavy conversation with the cast where John Cena joked about his fear of doing stunts, which he did for this movie at the request of director Sam Hargrave. "I was scared shitless," told the room. "I like fight choreographym that’s what I feel like I'm fluent at. I hate ledges, I hate heights, I hate cheating death. Each day, I shit my pants. I did a lot of things I'm afraid to do, I conquered none of my fears."
Leanne Butkovic (she/they) is an Editorial Project Manager at IGN, where they've also written about TV, movies, and games.
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