Apple TV’s “Widow’s Bay” is filled with idiosyncratic characters who wear their charming small-town quirks on their sleeves. But for Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), the local personalities pale in comparison to the evils lurking beneath the cursed island’s surface. Every few decades since its founding a dark and deadly cycle begins, terrorizing the local community, many of whom are unable to survive beyond the island’s borders. And unfortunately for Tom — but luckily for the show’s fans — those supernatural forces have been reawakened, just in time for the summer tourist season.But it’s not just the island’s evil nature that proves a foil to Tom’s ambitions to turn the town into a New England attraction that rivals Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard. Local fisherman Wyck Crawford, played by a delightfully rascally Stephen Root, serves as Loftis’ human antagonist, warning the mayor of impending doom. Wyck may be the voice of reason, but that voice is off-putting and his demeanor gruff. In the series’ tonal cocktail of comedy with horror — with both the jokes and the scares unrelenting — Root finds yet another scene-stealing role, one whose combination of silliness and seriousness allowed him to go to emotional depths as an actor, he says, for the first time in many years.“I’m more than thrilled that it’s become a kind of watercooler show,” says Root, who along with co-stars Rhys, Dale Dickey and Kate O’Flynn, received an Emmy nomination for his performance. (“Widow’s Bay” received 19 overall, including for comedy series, the most for a debut series this season.) Created by Katie Dippold, the genre-bending series launched on the streamer at the end of April and quickly found an audience largely through word of mouth. But from the very beginning, Root knew the show was something special. Stephen Root in “Widow’s Bay.” (Apple TV) “Everything I do these days I want to do with an excellent script, and you can play from there — and this was an astonishing script,” Root says. Originally written as a “Parks and Recreation” spec (Dippold eventually wrote 31 episodes of the NBC sitcom), “Widow’s Bay” naturally evolved from broadly comic to something more nuanced and more horror-driven. The characters in particular are more grounded, which immediately piqued Root’s interest. “There’s this familiar territory, but it’s done in such an original way and so truthfully,” he says. “As Matthew says, you can’t go wrong because all the comedy comes from character, and all the horror comes from real horror. There’s no need to juxtapose them; they come out of truthfulness.”Yet the comedy is so strong that Root giggles when he recalls moments from the show. There’s his first line: “Fog took ’im,” Wyck says as the explanation for another fisherman’s mysterious disappearance in the pilot, delivered with utmost seriousness yet still landing like a punchline. While Wyck may be outlandish and seemingly nuts, he’s passionate about Widow’s Bay and its people. “That’s the emotional core of the show,” he adds. “Wyck is trying to convince Tom [of the curse] because he’s lived through these things. He has researched them through hundreds of years. He’s devoted to protecting the town.” Stephen Root. (Evelyn Freja / For The Times) Root, a veteran character actor probably best known for his comedic roles like the nebbish Milton in Mike Judge’s cult classic “Office Space,” has had rare opportunities to flex his dramatic chops. One such role was Fuches, a mentor to Bill Hader’s assassin in HBO’s “Barry,” which earned Root his first Emmy nomination. “Being able to put some of my own empathy in the character is something I could do in ‘Barry,’” he says. “But with this, I’m really drawing from a deeper place.”It’s during a monologue in the seventh episode that we learn what haunts Wyck most: the guilt of causing his childhood friend’s drowning, which has weighed on him ever since. “He’s so unhappy with how he’s behaved through his life,” Root says. “It’s very difficult for him not to, because he’s trying to be a protector. He’s disappointed in himself, and he has to convince people that he’s not really crazy.”As famed improv guru Del Close said, there is truth in comedy — and that’s a place Root was excited to find himself. “For me to be able to do something that emotionally grounded in the middle of a comedy was such a joy,” he says. “The more you get to work on stuff like that, and the more that you become the character, the more fun you have.”
