Chasing a Feeling: A Conversation with ‘Widow’s Bay’ Creator and Showrunner Katie Dippold

Widow’s Bay is a quaint island town 40 miles off the coast of New England. But something lurks beneath the surface. Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is desperate to revive his struggling community. There’s no Wi-Fi, spotty cellular reception and he must contend with superstitious locals who believe their island is cursed. He wants these people to respect him. They don’t. They think he is soft and cowardly. And he is. But Loftis is determined to build a better future for his teenage son and turn the island into a tourist destination. Miraculously, he succeeds: tourists are finally coming. Unfortunately, the locals were right. After decades of calm, the old stories that seemed too ludicrous to be true, start happening again. Widow’s Bay blends genuine horror with character-driven comedy.

Katie Dippold’s (Parks and Recreation, The Heat) new show Widow’s Bay is an overflowing well of nightmares that you just need to take one more sip from, because it scares so good. The world in which this motley crew of characters live in is inescapable. The humor is sharp and the scares linger. An obvious ode to storytellers like Hitchcock and Spielberg, there’s nothing to be angry about there – it’s a visually pleasing and maze-like watching experience.  

What started out as a spec script for a writing job on Parks and Recreation has become a must-see television series. Katie Dippold shares how the idea took shape, pulling from a childhood feeling, the importance of balancing tension and humor, her collaboration with her A-team writers’ room, and creating a cozy yet gritty atmosphere with director Hiro Murai.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: I just gotta say, off the bat, this is one of the scariest and most fun shows I've watched in a very long time. There's a really cool Hitchcock and Spielberg-esque love letter and vibe to the show. It’s wonderfully written. Beautifully shot and directed. But before we get to the big picture, what initially sparked this idea for this show for you?

Katie Dippold: It's a couple different things. This is a very long journey. It begins in childhood, [laughs] unfortunately. I grew up in New Jersey in the 80s, and there's this feeling I've been chasing forever, which was every summer we’d go to The Long Branch boardwalk, there's a haunted house, and it was lawless, and I was way too young for it. But it was so scary, and I was also laughing so much, and I felt giddy, and that's a kind of feeling I've been chasing my whole life, and trying to figure out how to balance those two things in a project. So that was the first thing.

And then the next step I would say was when I submitted to Parks and Recreation, I started writing this as a spec sample for that, and it was different, it was much jokier, but it still gave Mike Schur an idea of my sense of humor. I worked on Parks for three seasons, and then I just went back to this. I started working on movies, but I just kept always going back to this and just taking it apart, putting it back together. I don't know why I couldn't give up on this. I mean, I do know why, because it's... I think if you're going to make a show, it should be everything you love, because it's so hard to do, and it really has to be everything... all of your sensibilities: your sense of humor, your thoughts on life, and people you know drawn in as the characters. And if you make that stew, then it makes it doable. [laughs] So, I kept coming back to it. It's something I always wish existed on TV, and also, I wish I could go to a New England haunted island and stay at a spooky inn.

Sadie: That's interesting that you say that about chasing that feeling from childhood of going to the haunted houses, this is kind of a tangent, but my father used to produce haunted houses –

Katie: What?! This is my dream! [laughs]

Sadie: [laughs] And we still have a tradition of going to haunted houses every year, and there is that feeling that you anticipate of being frightening, but there's that flipside of giddiness of you know you’re going to get scared, and it’ll be fantastic. You come out the other end of maze feeling like a kid again.

Katie: Yes! It taps into such a sense of joy. There's a haunted house I went to, LA is pretty great for haunted houses in October, and when you find one that's well done, it really makes you feel like a kid again. There's nothing like it. I just find it so delightful. I go to Universal Horror Nights every year, and I'm just beaming. "Oh! Delightful, you got me. Great work!"

Making a great haunted house is like writing. I really do believe it, like the setup, the anticipation, the magic trick that you have to pull, I really think it's similar. I've always thought, if this goes wrong for me in show business, I'm just going to try to make haunted houses. [laughs]

Sadie: There's a few things about the show that I thought were just writerly genius, specifically in the episode when the New York Times travel journalist is visiting the town’s little museum, and Gerrie, the woman giving the tour, beams with pride when talking about the witch trials. That was such a great way into understanding this community and what the ride's going to be for us as viewers.  How you were able to establish that tone that quickly without really pulling the rug out from under us?

Katie: That's one of the harder scenes. That scene was in the initial pilot spec I submitted to Parks and Rec, but it was different. It was longer and a little bit broader, and also that version in the spec, the mayor was fully aware that the island was haunted. And in the show now it takes them a while to come to terms with it, not too long, you know, a couple of episodes.

That scene, trying to balance… you have to believe this place is real, you have to believe these people are real, because if you don't, you're never going to feel any tension, you're never going to be scared, and you're just kind of dead in the water. So, finding jokes that work that don't take away from that is the constant challenge.

And also, that actress Nancy [Lenehan], who plays Gerrie, I think is so perfect, like it could so easily be played like the trope stuffy librarian telling you what's what, but she just plays it so beautifully natural and dry. And when the actors play it dry and real, like this is matter of fact, that's the funniest thing to me in the world.

Sadie: It’s so good. It’s like the big imposing cannibalism poster and Mayor Loftis is like, ‘Cannibals? No, not here.’  

Katie: I feel like a real comedy engine is having Matthew Rhys have to pretend you don't know what you're talking about when you're pointing at something terrifying. [laughs]

Sadie: Speaking of Matthew Rhys, stellar casting across the board, but he is so great as this character. He’s incredibly dislikable, but you are rooting for him, and then you get stuck with him, because he’s our way in to encounter the scary stuff. How you were mapping out his character journey, from this guy who's trying to really change this town, bring some life to it, to now kind of being a believer of the superstitions of the town?

Katie: I feel like Loftis starts off in a place of denial and a chip on his shoulder, because the locals don't respect him, and he knows that, and that makes him have his armor up even more. So, things like episode two, it's a lot of fun to see someone forced to go to the haunted inn to prove it's not haunted, but also it let us explore, does he really believe this stuff or not? Is he the coward the locals say he is? And also, how did he get here?

And then you learn about his dad, who is an alcoholic, and that's why he just rolls his eyes at the drinking fishermen and their stories. And I do kind of understand where he's coming from, like I do have people in my life and family that just want to be negative, and I find myself being the Loftis, like come on, this can be better. And it's very hard dealing with people that are so wired and set in their way and will not change.

And so, he starts from that place, but the goal was, as the season goes on, you learn more about what has happened to him and what he's really trying to do and what he really knows deep down, and so that gets unpacked. Also, a big part of it is I just think leadership. What makes a good leader? And I feel like we've lost a lot of nuances in conversations, and it's become so much about when a politician writes a flashy Tweet, I'm just like, but what are you doing? [laughs] I just find myself frustrated, but what are you doing?

So, to have this person who we make it really messy for him - the choice is not easy. What are some really ugly dilemmas, and what would you do? When you get to the end of the season, there's a couple dilemmas that come up that really were debated in the room, and it was always fascinating to me who thought what... I was always surprised what writer would do one thing, what writer would do another, and so it was just trying to stick with what do I think this character would do.

Sadie: What were you looking for in terms of voices to add to this world that you had created?

Katie: This show I knew it requires a lot because it wants a lot. You want to have really funny moments, but you want really scary moments, and you want twists and turns, and you also want to get into the characters and understand them.

So, it wasn't like a room just full of comedy writers... comedy writers are also great at drama, it's not to pigeonhole anyone. But I tried something different, which was it was me and seven other writers, and a couple of them were old comedy writer friends, like my friend Neil Casey, that worked on SNL and several other shows, Colton Dunn, who worked on Key and Peele, Kelly Galuska, who's wonderful, and has written on so many different shows. And then there were people like Bobak Esfarjani and Mackenzie Dohr, who came from Wanda Vision, very smart, very great with structure and mythology, and Alberto Roldán, who worked on Wanda Vision, who had a spec that was like nothing I'd ever read before, and Dave Harris, who's a wonderful playwright, and he really likes thinking about the emotion of the characters.

It was a real mix, it was a real stew, and it felt like running a room can feel like you're hosting a dinner party and leading the conversation, and it feels like you have a lot of time… 20 weeks feels like a lot of time, but it's really not a lot of time, it's really not. So, I would spend the day in the room with the writers, and we'd probably end at about five or six, and then I would go home. I would also specifically sit with a pen and notebook, even though we had a writer's assistant writing down everything, I would write down the things that really stuck with me that someone said... there's something about the brain pen to paper connection is a real thing.

And so, then I would go home every night, and I would keep thinking about it until I went to bed, because I needed to know, OK that's what we did today. Now I need to know where to take it tomorrow, because there was not a second to spare. So, then I would go in the next day, ‘OK this is what I took from yesterday. Here's what we're gonna talk about now.’

That was the only way I could really keep this going and finish it in time. By the end, it was so fun seeing everyone really fully understand the show, and arguing for things, and debating each other, and everyone fired up in the best possible way.

Sadie: Establishing the visual language with your director Hiro Murai, what comps and references were you two inspired by, and then flipping that to make it your own?

Katie: Atlanta is one of my favorite shows of all time, so I was dead set on trying to get him to direct the show, and fortunately he said yes. We talked about Jaws a lot, and how it feels having the town feel cozy. This is a little different than Amity, because it's not as sunny and cheerful, it's a little bit grittier...

There's this diner in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and I went there while I was working on this, and it's just very lived in, very cozy, not perfect, just very quaint and cozy. And it had people taking a cigarette break outside, old coffee mugs, and locals eating breakfast at the counter - that's the feeling I always wanted. Hiro and I always talked about getting that cozy feeling that still has some of that grit, and you can sort of get the feeling that something is lurking underneath the surface, was sort of the goal.

And also making it feel like this is an island town, and it's small, but there's much to discover. So, for example, the inn isn't on the main street... there's trees around it to make it feel like it's a little bit isolated, so, what else is on the island?

Anything that makes you want to lean in, that's the other thing, like we both wanted the tone... that was sort of jokes where you blink and you miss it, and that's OK. You might miss this moment that we think is hilarious, but that's OK, we would rather the tone be that than presenting a joke in a big way, and kind of taking you out of it.

Sadie: Yeah, as a viewer, you’re just so invested in this town and world. Were there any episodes that were surprisingly challenging to tackle on the page?

Katie: I gotta be honest, all of them had some challenge. The one I have to say at the top of my head, one of the more challenging ones was [episode] 107 for the sole reason that one of the most outrageous things happens, and to figure out how these characters would react to it, so you're not falling off the rails. That took a lot of thought and rewrites, because it was, and I'm thinking of one scene in particular that drove me crazy - something happens, and how Loftis reacts to it in a way that is believable was much harder, because I can draw from real life. [laughs]

So every episode has something like that, where you can easily fall off the rails, and so you have to constantly just be so hard on yourself and the scripts to be like, 'I don't know if I buy this,' and you just have to all keep banging your heads together to figure out a way to make it work, so it keeps flowing.

Widow's Bay is now streaming on Apple TV+.