Matthew Rhys has enjoyed a packed schedule on television over the past year and change. In 2025 alone, he shared the screen with Claire Danes in Netflix‘s miniseries The Beast in Me, led BritBox‘s Agatha Christie mystery show,Towards Zero, and lent his voice to Ken Burns‘ star-studded miniseries The American Revolution. The new year hasn’t slowed him down either, as he’s most recently been heard as the official voice of Dinosaurus/David Anders in Season 4 of Prime Video‘s smash-hit superhero series Invincible. April 29 will now see him head to Apple TV to take on his next role as the mayor of Widow’s Bay.
Created by Katie Dippold, Widow’s Bay is a horror comedy that leans particularly into the macabre as it explores the terrors that lie just beneath the surface of the titular New England island town. At the center is Mayor Tom Loftis (Rhys), who is determined to revitalize the community as a proper tourist destination, but that’s easier said than done with no Wi-Fi, poor cell service, and superstitious locals who don’t respect him at all. Yet, despite his reputation for being “soft and cowardly,” he manages to draw in tourists and begin the process of turning Widow’s Bay into the next Nantucket. However, the locals’ fears soon prove right, and the stories of the town’s cursed reputation begin coming to life. Apple TV shared the first official teaser trailer today that finally pulls back the curtain on the horrors.
The footage begins with a bit of a tour through Widow’s Bay’s history as Tom meets with a tourist. As soon as it’s brought up that bad things happen in the town, the mayor reassures that all the talk of supernatural happenings and other terrifying events is just the typical tall tales that wash up in sea-faring locales. However, an ominous montage featuring a burning ritualistic pyre, a gnarled hand creeping through a window, a strange woman in white, and other eerie, surreal sights, undermines his insistence that it’s all just superstition. Hilariously, there’s literally a giant framed newspaper article about cannibalism right behind him in the town hall. It’s all a showcase of both the light humor and dread that combine to make Widow’s Bay and its people who they are.
‘Widow’s Bay’ Owes Its Existence in Part to ‘Parks and Recreation’
Rhys leads a starry ensemble in Widow’s Bay, including Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root, Kingston Rumi Southwick, Kevin Carroll, and Dale Dickey, with a supporting cast featuring K Callan and Somebody Somewhere Emmy winner Jeff Hiller. Another Emmy recipient, The Bear‘s Hiro Murai, also serves as director and executive producer for the ten-episode series. Although there are many talented voices involved, this is a project uniquely Dippold‘s. In a previous interview with Collider‘s Maggie Lovitt for our Exclusive Spring Preview series, she explained how the idea was born out of a love for New England and its history. The comedy of the mostly horror-centric series also came out of her experience getting a job on Parks and Recreation, as it “originally was my spec script to get hired.”
18 years later, Dippold made some changes to better fit the more serious and terrifying tale she wanted to tell. There’s still some of her sense of humor mixed in that could be traced back to Pawnee, but the goal is for both genres to work together and create a fun juxtaposition as the season goes on and the tension grows.
“I really wanted to avoid that feeling that can happen in comedy-horror sometimes, where something happens and then someone makes a joke, like, ‘Well, that happened.’ Everything in this is taken very seriously, and wanting the humor to come from character. And I found that juxtaposition didn’t have to undercut each other. Instead, it could feed off of each other. And as the season goes on and the tensions rise, that juxtaposition gets even stronger, and it becomes even more fun, even though it gets more intense. So, it was a tonal tightrope from beginning to end — in the writers’ room, the scripts, when we were casting, in the edit — constantly. But it’s felt very satisfying when those two played off of each other.”
Widow’s Bay premieres with two episodes on April 29 on Apple TV. New episodes will release every Wednesday through June 17, with a special two-episode drop on May 27. Check out the trailer in the player above.
via Collider