'Widow's Bay' Was Inspired By a Haunted Jersey Shore House

Matthew Rhys and Stephen Root in "Widow's Bay." Photo: Courtesy of Apple TV

Dense fog creeps through the dark, sleepy island of Widow’s Bay. A distinct sense of foreboding sets in—this is no mere weather event.

“It’s a haunt!”

At least according to Wyck, a grizzled island local. He believes the place is cursed, and he’s not the only one. A missing man is presumed to be “taken” by the fog, and Wyck fears the curse will soon take everyone. But Mayor Tom Loftis has no patience for folklore and superstition. Desperate for summer tourism, he’s pushing Widow’s Bay as “the next Bar Harbor” even though an earthquake just knocked out power lines.

This fictional island sits off the coast of New England, though its creator says the “cursed” land was born from Jersey shores.

Widow’s Bay, a new Apple TV series that chases comedy with the macabre, is the first show from screenwriter Katie Dippold, who developed a taste for frights growing up in New Jersey. She’s known for writing movies like The Heat, Haunted Mansion and the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot.

The showrunner, who hails from Freehold, got her scares at the Shore in the ’80s.

<b>Katie Dippold during a 2018 visit to Freehold Township High School to speak to the students.

Katie Dippold during a 2018 visit to Freehold Township High School to speak to the students. Photo: Courtesy of Katie Dippold

“There used to be a haunted house on the boardwalk in Long Branch,” Dippold tells New Jersey Monthly. “It was terrifying, and I was way too young for it … I would be so scared, but I would be so excited and giddy. And that’s actually a huge inspiration for this show I’m doing, because I want to capture that feeling again, where something is tense and terrifying, but then you still laugh at the end.”

Widow’s Bay, premiering with two episodes April 29, stars Matthew Rhys as Tom, mayor of an island that’s more Tales from the Crypt than Ted Lasso.

Series creator Dippold, 46, and Rhys, Emmy-winning star of The Americans, are executive producers alongside Hiro Murai (Atlanta and Barry), who directs half the episodes. Screen veteran Stephen Root (also Barry) plays the rattled Wyck. At first, Tom refuses to entertain his stories about ghouls and curses. He dismisses them as “tall tales” invented by bored men at sea … until a whole bunch of seemingly supernatural things start happening to him. Tales of ghost ships, killer clowns, local zombies and detestable sea hags build to jump scares with plenty of laughs around every corner.

“I’m a horror fan, first and foremost, even though I’m a comedy writer,” Dippold says from Los Angeles, where she’s lived for 20 years (she misses Jersey diners, bagels, pizza, trees, humid nights and lightning bugs).

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Tom claims that Widow’s Bay is home to the second oldest lighthouse in the United States. Source: dubious.

New Jersey’s Sandy Hook is, in fact, the oldest still in operation. Dippold grew up a short drive from the Shore, where her friends favored Manasquan.

“I sunburn easily so I did not go as much as them,” she says, calling her face “translucent.” But she appreciates the boardwalks. “I think we went to Wildwood after prom. My boyfriend of 15 years, he’s from outside of Philly, and his family would go to South Jersey every summer and they still have a condo there. So every summer, I go to Margate and we’ll go to the Ocean City boardwalk where they’ll have dark rides (she also likes the oversized pizza slices). That dark ride in a summer on a boardwalk is everything that makes me happy. But also New Jersey itself—I love it so much. Even though this show is about New England, it is a lot about growing up in New Jersey in the ’80s and ’90s.”

The mystery at the heart of Widow’s Bay is gradually revealed through stories from the island’s past. Dippold prefers the 10-episode arc to horror that “resets” each week. “I didn’t want it to feel like a parody,” she says, though the show does celebrate horror tropes. That meant casting a lead who could carry mood shifts.

“Matthew Rhys is such an incredible actor,” Dippold says. “He has this pitch-perfect comedic timing.”

Everyone on set in Massachusetts was “downright giddy” about Rhys, Dippold says. The cast also includes English actor Kate O’Flynn (My Lady Jane), Emmy winner Jeff Hiller (Somebody Somewhere) and Dale Dickey (The Lowdown) as Widow’s Bay town employees. Kevin Carroll (The Leftovers) is the exasperated police chief and Kingston Rumi Southwick (Presumed Innocent) is Tom’s restless son, who wants off the island.

As for Dippold, she left Jersey with her family in second grade, moving to upstate New York then the San Francisco Bay Area. They returned her sophomore year at Freehold Township High—just in time for Mischief Night was her pal Johnny.

“Before smartphones, you had to look for a way to keep yourself busy, and we would do that in the form of terrorizing our friends,” she says. “We kept driving to his parents’ house where his mom was sitting in the living room, and we would hit the high beams. She would look nervous and come to the window, and we would just drive away … We came back a third time and his dad’s car was no longer in the driveway. It was very chilling. We’re like ‘oh no, he’s out there somewhere.’ We just quietly tried to drive away and get out of there, and then his dad just sped out from the trees and caught up to us and cut us off. And we just start screaming, like, ‘we’re sorry! We’re sorry!’”

Katie Dippold at the 1984 Freehold Township Memorial Day parade.

Dippold at the 1984 Freehold Township Memorial Day parade. Photo: Courtesy of Katie Dippold

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Dippold brought her affinity for shadowy scenes to Rutgers, where she met comedian Chris Gethard. He worked for Weird N.J. before breaking out as a stand-up.

“There’s something about exploring scary places,” she says. “We would go to Clinton Road (in West Milford). But also there’s an abandoned mental institution we went inside. I don’t recommend doing this, but just that feeling of thinking you can explore all these different weird, strange things, that’s something I wanted to put in the show … There’s just something lurking beneath the surface.”

As a child, the future journalism major made her own newspaper—emphasis on the opinion section. “I would write articles, most of them disparaging, just very rude to my sister,” Dippold says. “Then I would start writing stories. I remember I would take plastic wrap around the front page and the back page to make it look more like a real book. In high school, the idea of being a screenwriter just sounded very exciting to me.”

She found a passion for sketch comedy at Rutgers’ Cabaret Improv Theatre and College Avenue Players. She also interned at Late Night with Conan O’Brien. She performed at Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York, and in 2006, moved to LA and wrote for Mad TV.

Dippold made her feature screenwriting debut with action movie The Heat (2013), directed by Paul Feig. The buddy comedy, starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, grossed $229 million worldwide. (Ghostbusters—also directed by Feig—Snatched and Haunted Mansion followed.)

“There’s a sequel for the movie written,” she says, though Bullock didn’t want to pursue another film. (Dippold doesn’t think she read the script.) “I was writing it and I saw a headline in Huffington Post saying she doesn’t like doing sequels. Who knows, maybe one day it’ll change her mind. That would be a lot of fun. She was great.”

***

A certain strain of municipal humor feels familiar in Widow’s Bay.

“This script was my spec script to get a writing job on Parks and Recreation,” Dippold says.

The NBC comedy series is prized from New Jersey to California for its hilarious, lovable characters, memorable lines and skewering of town government (plus coining Galentine’s Day and Treat Yo’ Self Day). Dippold, who wrote for the show starting in 2009, adores its penchant for “following the fun,” or building whole episodes referencing earlier “throwaway” gags.

Curious paintings in Widow’s Bay recall the horrific town murals of Pawnee, Indiana. “Parks and Rec is in my DNA,” Dippold says.

In the new show, characters point out misogynistic details from island legends. (The ghost of Hortense Fitzgerald is an “ugly woman” who fell to her death fleeing her wedding: “If you say ‘ugly Hortense’ three times you’ll see her ungrateful reflection.”) Dippold’s first version of Widow’s Bay 18 years ago “was much jokier, and I don’t know that I would’ve watched,” she says. Series writers developed the local lore, from artifacts to sea shanty tunes. (The show’s title comes from wives waiting for husbands to return from sea — most didn’t.) Mayor Tom hypes up the island as a vacation spot, lack of Wi-Fi and crummy cell service be damned. A travel writer asks him if locals ever engaged in cannibalism.

“No,” Tom says, standing next to a framed article about cannibalism in Widow’s Bay. “I mean, look, was there a deadly storm in 1786? Yes. Did a group of people get trapped inside a church? Apparently so. Did they immediately turn to cannibalism? No, that took four days.”

Comedy! But have you seen Dippold’s hall-of-fame tweet?

“Tbt to Halloween when I dressed as the babadook but my friend’s house had more of a grown ups drinking wine vibe,” she posted in 2016. An accompanying photo, retweeted 123,000 times, showed her face painted ghastly white, her glowing eyes ringed with black makeup to match a top hat (like the 2014 horror film The Babadook). A decade later, Dippold elaborates on the viral moment.

“I didn’t walk in the door at first,” she says. “I stared through the window for a long time until they noticed me and would be scared. And that was successful. And then when I went inside, it really sunk in that no one was dressed up (a lone Sopranos-inspired tracksuit didn’t really count) … I was also drinking red wine, so I had red wine teeth, and that against the pale white makeup was very upsetting to everyone. And then we just kind of sat down and watched an entire movie. That’s one thing the tweet doesn’t show.”