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Widow’s Bay Reigning as the sleeper hit of 2026, Kingston’s Romy Southwick can’t wait for season two.
“It’s a lot of fun,” says the 18-year-old. Hollywood Reporter In the last zoom. “I’m glad people are connecting with him.”
The actor plays Evan, Tom’s son Matthew Rhys, in the Apple TV horror comedy series. Created by Katie Diebold, Widow’s Bay The film takes place in a fictional – and very cursed – town on a New England island, and centers around Tom, the town’s mayor.
Since the series premiered in April, it has continued to gain momentum both critically and in viewership. “I remember reading it for the first time and saying, ‘I love this,'” Southwick says.
Accent Widow’s Bay It’s hard to land, and it happens a lot, but Southwick was curious about how it looked when filming the show. “I was watching it and thought this was exactly what I was thinking, if not better than I imagined,” he says.
It was easy to get into Southwick’s spooky New England atmosphere, largely because the show was filmed across Massachusetts. “We were shooting in these little seaside towns outside of Boston, in people’s homes. I would talk to the owners, and they would have their own homes.” Widow’s Bay“Great stories. They really put you in the mindset of being in a haunted seaside town, so I’m glad we shot in Massachusetts because I’ve never been there before, and the place is a very big part of the story,” he says.
The show moved between sound stages and location shots to get this environment right. “You see the town with Richard Warren’s severed head, and that’s what it really looks like. You could be there today, and it would look exactly the same,” Southwick says.
Diebold spent years finding the right tone for the show that would translate to audiences. It was something that caught Southwick’s attention when he read the script. He points out the state of horror right now, with franchises continuing to produce sequels and new entry points, e.g mania and Back roomswhich works well too.
“What Widow’s Bay It was a really good performance because it took those horror tropes and made them happen [them] Its own. “It’s a very original idea,” says the actor. It also points out how funny the show is and how difficult it is.
For Southwick, whose previous credits include Presumed innocent and 56 daysPlaying with Evan was a dream. “He’s a really smart kid,” he says of Evan. “There’s a lot that Evan can say and will say and so on, but he doesn’t give away everything he wants to say or feels he can.”
The father-son relationship between Evan and Tom is a huge driving force of Evan’s story. “There’s a lot of unspoken things, and I think that’s also partly because I don’t have a mother,” Southwick says of his character. “Being able to have emotional intelligence or awareness of being able to talk about how you feel or things like that [is important]. Evan didn’t grow up with that. He grew up with a father who kind of wanted everything to be perfect and to be the perfect thing.
Looking to the future, Southwick is excited to see how Evan can grow and what might be in store for the recently announced second season. “I’m really excited about not only the mischief he gets into, but also the levels he can reach,” he says.
Southwick says he and his team will talk on set about how he might develop next season if he plays with him one way or another. The actor also wanted to venture more into comedy work, as he has mostly worked in dramas. “This is a good way for me personally as an actor to ease into it,” he says. “I think for Season 2, there could be a lot of opportunities for Evan to be in a really crazy, funny situation.”
