Leave it to Betty Gilpin — four-time acting Emmy nominee, beloved author, national treasure — to explain the unique charms of Apple TV’s smash hit “Widow’s Bay” in just two words. Two, we must impress upon you, made-up words.
“Yeah, it’s scunny and it’s fary,” Gilpin joked to IndieWire during a recent Zoom about her latest Emmy-nominated turn in the series. (I had noted that it’s “scary and funny in ways we’ve not quite seen before.”) But understanding that tonal balance — not just funny and scary, but scunny and fary — is key to Gilpin’s turn in Katie Dippold’s lauded series. As a nominee in the Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series category, Gilpin pops up in just two episodes, the first of which (“Our History”) garnered the actress her first non-“GLOW” nomination.
So, how does someone walk into a brand-new series, take on a standalone episode that is also set in the far past, and still so perfectly capture what makes a show like “Widow’s Bay” such a standout? As Gilpin explained, she didn’t even have the benefit of an episode or two to watch beforehand, only the series’ pilot script to tap into.
“They had shot all [the other] nine episodes,” Gilpin said. “We filmed at the end, so Hamish [Linklater, also nominated for an Emmy] and it really felt like we were in someone’s childhood home and they had just moved out. The crew had all been working together, and our cast chairs were set up in these contemporary sets. You could feel that people had just done work in but now were gone.”
Set on the fictional island of Widow’s Bay (like Martha’s Vineyard, but also so not), the series follows beleaguered mayor Tom Loftis (Emmy nominee Matthew Rhys) as he attempts to relaunch the town as a tourist destination (again, like Martha’s Vineyard, but so not). This endeavor is made all the more complicated by the town’s — deeply haunted — history, much of it stemming from whispered stories about its founder, Lord Island Protector Richard Warren (Linklater).
Plenty of delightful tidbits about the Warrens are doled out during the series’ first five episodes, but that only makes Episode 6 such a treat: we don’t just meet the very weird Richard, we are also introduced to his second wife, Sarah Westcott Warren (Gilpin), who arrives on the island to meet her recently widowed new paramour, his sulky kids, and a whole lot of seemingly evil drama.
“So we were like, ‘So, it’s a comedy?’ They were like, ‘No.’ ‘So, it’s a horror show.’ ‘No, you’ll see. We’ll find it,’” Gilpin remembered of her early discussions with the show’s creative team, including showrunner Dippold, EP Hiro Murai, and episode director Ti West. “We would do comedic takes, we would do straight down the line horror takes, and what is in the episode is sort of a braid of all the different kinds of takes, the genres that we did. … I felt pretty nervous walking into it. Once we started, I was like, ‘Oh, I think this is what I’ve been trying to will middle-of-the-road TV to be.’ I’m like, ‘Should I be sobbing and also have the hook from Looney Tunes?’ Mugging in a hoop skirt is absolutely where I want to be in life, and it just felt really like coming home to a home I never knew before.”
While Gilpin’s entire performance is perfectly calibrated to the show’s special wavelength, there are at least three line readings that particularly standing out as just nailing it. If you’ve seen Gilpin’s episode, you know them: her jittery speech about how she might “come to enjoy the role” of being a childless and unmarried woman, a shocked screech about the state of Richard after a particularly bad night (“Richard is allllivee!!”), and her attempt to unyoke herself from her new stepchildren (“I have but just met them”).
As I offered my own — just awful — reading of each, Gilpin laughed knowingly. “All of those three, I’m really excited to report, were the first takes,” she said. “After which Ti West was like, ‘I think you should take it down a notch. I think you should take that… I don’t know if that’s it.’ And then when I watched it, I’m like, ‘He used my huge, farcical takes. This is a victory for over-actors everywhere.’ Because so much of my career has been huge choices on the first take, and the director comes in and is like, “So, we have that one, let’s try where we pull it back.” And then I watched the episode, and I’m like, bless you, Ti West, he used all my farcical, swing-for-the-fences tanks. I was so pleased.”
Without the benefit of other episodes to watch, Gilpin admitted she was eager for more information. In hindsight, though, it allowed her to not only play some of Sarah’s drama with a straight face, but later, to enjoy the show just as a fan.
“I kept asking questions, and everyone was like, ‘It’s better if you know nothing. It’s better if Sarah thinks this is her ‘Pride and Prejudice’ moment, like it’s her big ‘Jane Eyre’ moment. She’s going to marry the mysterious man, credits roll, what a romantic story,’” she said. “So watching the show in real time, I was learning everything with the audience. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, that’s my letter. Oh, my God, that’s my doll’s clip. Oh, I’m in the painting!’ I knew none of that.”
While Gilpin doesn’t identify as a horror fan, the big stakes and big emotions of “Widow’s Bay” and its terrifying underpinnings really speak to her, and not just as a performer.
“It’s just so, at once, unique and familiar, and it has given me renewed faith in our industry as a whole, completely. It never feels like a sketch,” the actress said. “You feel these characters wanting things so desperately. There’s sort of cool disease that has pervaded television, where it’s not cool to write someone wanting something more than anything. Part of the horror is, will they not get the thing they want most in the world? It’s the monster chasing them and also their dream that’s just out of reach, whether it’s not to feel lonely anymore or to feel like you have a family or to feel like you can provide peace for the people that you are leading. That is why the comedy and horror lands so deeply, because you’re so invested in every single person very personally.”
Gilpin never expected that her enthusiasm for the series would lead to her fourth Emmy nomination (she was previously nominated three times for her work on the dearly departed Netflix series “GLOW”). “It was such a dream. It was so much fun,” Gilpin said. “Definitely did not think I’d get nominated for a fucking Emmy for it. That’s ridiculous! I was on a plane, and one of my best friends texted me, ‘You just got an Emmy nomination.’ And I texted him back, ‘For what?’ … By the time the plane landed, I was like, ‘Oh, 19 [nominations]. I see. OK, great. Yes, that is deserved.’”
And while her nomination is nice, Gilpin was particularly thrilled to see the raft of other acting nominations the show earned, not just Rhys and Linklater, but Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root, and Dale Dickey, too. These are her people.
“Growing up the child of stage actors, where so many plays that I saw with my parents had endless lists of character actors who never got their big break, I saw the most incredible performances, mostly at very small regional theaters across the Northeast,” Gilpin said. “This show feels like such a win for that corner of our business. It just feels like such a pro-actor show, where even the one-line parts, you’re like, ‘Who the fuck is that? They’re amazing.’”
Don’t get her started on Dickey in particular, who was nominated for her first Emmy for her turn as the all-knowing (and kind of pissed off about it) Rosemary.
“Dale Dickey? I was sobbing when I saw… I could cry now. I was sobbing when I saw her name,” Gilpin said. “It just feels like there are these actresses out there of that generation, that I point myself toward like a boat against a current, where I’m like, ‘I know that my algorithm and bank account, and all these things, probably want me to point this way, but wouldn’t that be a more interesting direction?’ So, anytime that that is recognized and celebrated, that level of ability, artistry, risk, originality, fucking balls, I’m so inspired by. I continue to feel so moved that the world agrees with me that Dale Dickey is a fucking genius.”
(Incidentally, Gilpin is just coming off filming Season 2 of “The Lowdown,” which Dickey appeared in last season. Gilpin said that working on the series with creator Sterlin Harjo and star Ethan Hawke was “the freest I’ve ever felt at work.”) She lights up the same way when she talks about “Widow’s Bay” and “The Lowdown,” and she really lights up when talking about Dippold’s show.
“I feel like because I’m not an actual part of the real show, I can brag about it and it’s not bragging about myself,” Gilpin said. “I’m so glad that the exhausted people that I worked with who were like, ‘I hope we made something good. I don’t know. I’m so tired,’ they made the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen. … The show as a whole feels like the ultimate fuck you to safe, algorithm-friendly, ChatGPT, copy/paste television. And yet, it’s found such mainstream success, and that’s what people fucking want. It’s just so satisfying.”
Even with just one episode (and a small appearance in a later ep), Gilpin said she’s been getting more feedback for “Widow’s Bay” than any of her other projects. And when she meets those fans? She feels like they’re all kind of in on something together, like they are also her kind of people, the sorts of characters who might also go for that big, farcical line reading and nail it.
“I would say I’m not a person who gets recognized a lot, and the past two months have been the most I’ve ever gotten stopped, because people love the show. Something I was on for seven days of filming!,” she said. “We’re all going to have to find a way in this world to fall back in love with each other and find collective experience. The fuckery of the last decade has really made it seem like there are 30 of us that hold the same values, interests, and desire to have the world still be a joyful, curious, safe, smart, beautiful place. The success of ‘Widow’s Bay’? It makes me feel like there are more of us out there than we tell ourselves when we are doom scrolling, and we just have to remind ourselves of that.”
Does that mean she wants to (somehow) come back for Season 2? Gilpin, perpetually engaged and open-hearted, practically leapt through her laptop when I asked about the possibility.
“Listen, I’m texting Katie Dippold, doing backflips, trying to be like, ‘OK, maybe I snort the fog of the island when I’m out on the boat with the children and it curses me too and I’m immortal,’” she said. “Yes, trust me, I’m pitching all different kinds of ways for me to come back. I loved it so much.”
The first season of “Widow’s Bay” is now streaming on Apple TV.