‘Below’ Producers Explain Why Their Show Isn’t Just Netflix’s ‘Widow’s Bay’

If you’re going to make a show about a Newfoundland bayman and pack the background with local anglers, your lead better look — and sound — like a Newfoundland bayman. Below found its everyman in 2002 Razzie nominee Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor). After taking a prolonged break from Hollywood, Hartnett has quietly been doing some very good work in recent years — and Below is no exception.

Below was shot entirely on location in a setting that itself toes the line between “folklore” and “real history,” creator/showrunner (and Newfoundlander-in-law) Jesse McKeown tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Below executive producer Jessica Rhoades estimated the series is about 70 percent science fact; McKeown took some exception to the number, himself going with 90 percent.

One thing McKeown and Rhoades agreed on, however, is that Below had to get the accent 100 percent right. Viewership from actual Newfoundlanders will be immaterial to the big picture and, as McKeown puts it, “everybody else is hearing [the accent] mostly for the first time.”

But forget the global audience — McKeown needs to keep the peace at home.

“I happen to be married to a Newfoundlander and I spend a lot of my time there, and so for my own life I had to get it right,” McKeown says. “The accent has been done so poorly before and butchered so many times.”

Mrs. McKeown, otherwise known as the actress Marthe Bernard, was “”worried” about not just the dialect but also Calvin Penney’s (Hartnett) “mannerisms,” her husband relays. Not because of Hartnett’s abilities, but because the viewer’s entry point into all things Newfoundland flow through Calvin. As prep, the island’s radio shows The Fisheries Broadcast and Open Line lived in Hartnett’s headphones rent-free. The collective feedback following a local screening (itself following the show’s Toronto International Film Festival premiere) was reassuring.

Rhoades, who previously worked with Hartnett on Black Mirror episode “Beyond the Sea,” believes the Netflix-user experience with the accent will be akin to a Broadway traditionalist seeing Hamilton for the first time.

“You weren’t used to the language, to the rap. The first time I saw it, I didn’t make out the lyrics — the words in the first like one or two songs — and I remember the moment I engaged, and [caught] every word after that,” she says. “And once you go back, of course— the second time you hear every single word.”

“I felt like this was going to be that, and I truly do believe there’s a point in episode one where you just lock in. We’ve heard a lot of people watch and listen, and they forget that the accents happen, I think, at a certain point,” Rhoades continues. “And that’s sort of the goal.”

Well, Below features far less-complex rhyme schemes — some might say none at all. The series centers on Calvin, a fisherman living in a small Newfoundland town who is “still haunted by his father’s mysterious death from decades ago,” as the show’s synopsis reads. “When an unidentified sea creature begins terrorizing his hometown, Calvin must fight to hold his close-knit community together.”

Meanwhile, he’s also gotta find some good ice.

Of course, there is more to Below than saying the word “boy” as “b’y,” as the closed captions spell out for us. (I don’t want to spoil any of it, so I won’t. But can we please discuss the giant squid in the room?)

Team Below wants you to know that their series is not just Netflix’s Emmy-winning series Widow’s Bay. Sure, they’re both prestige 2026 streaming series set on an island where people talk funny, surrounded by waters that have become incredibly deadly for mysterious (and mystical) reasons. And yes, one middle-aged white man takes on the personal responsibility of saving his fellow locals while saving his son — but other than that…

“The people behind it are so different, and both shows are so bespoke to their creators. I knew Katie’s [Dippold, the Widow’s Bay creator] script for years — everyone loved that, it was brilliant,” Rhoades says. “Jesse’s scripts were so different and so specific. And I think it’s different when you talk about them in the broad sense, and you talk about them in a logline, or you see maybe even a trailer. But like those were very different scripts. There were very different north stars and goals. And for me, I was not worried about that because I knew we were making different shows when they were even on parallel tracks.”

Dippold’s Widow’s Bay pilot script was (now famously) all over Hollywood for more than a decade. McKeown, who was less familiar with what became the Emmy-gobbling Apple TV comedy, allowed himself a temporary moment of weakness.

“I didn’t — I don’t — think the [Widow’s Bay] teaser came out. I wasn’t aware of it until after we wrapped, and so my first reaction was, ‘Oh shit,'” McKeown says. “But everyone who watched it assured me that it was very different.”

All six episodes of Below are now available to stream on Netflix.