How ‘Widow’s Bay’ Went From Almost Not Getting Made to Emmys Dominance

Freshman show Widow’s Bay dominated the 2026 Emmys last night with 14 wins, setting an all-time record for a comedy series. It’s hard to believe, then, that it took creator Katie Dippold almost 20 years to get it made.

In the months leading up to the Emmys, Dippold spoke to The Hollywood Reporter numerous times, and revealed the journey of how her horror comedy came to be. In fact, Dippold had been working on some version of this pilot for almost two decades, and it was her spec when she got interviewed to get on the writing staff for Parks & Recreation. She started out with a completely different idea for the show but soon realized she wouldn’t have watched that show herself.

“It’s the same … but different,” Dippold said during a recent episode of The Hollywood Reporter podcast, I’m Having an Episode. “It made it easy for Mike Schur to get a sense of my humor and my joke writing. That got me that job. But there was no real tension in it. It wasn’t as grounded. And it wasn’t serialized. Even though now, there’s a monster of the week element, there is still a larger story we’re telling. So, I just spent years thinking about it because I didn’t feel like it was right to do that show. I don’t know that I would have watched that show if I’m being honest. So, it was just years of working on it, taking it apart, putting it back together, throwing things out, trying things. This is ridiculous, but whenever I went to New York, I’d go to the Museum of Natural History. I’d walk around and I would imagine what the Widow’s Bay version of the display cases would look like. That, weirdly, opened things up for me. The more I thought about the history of this island, that made it feel like a real place.”

She said she didn’t know “if this would ever get made. … It’s gotten harder over the years. It’s gotten more fear-based. People just kind of want something that’s like something else that was recently successful. I was just having a tough time. I was getting frustrated, so I thought I would take a swing at this. It still felt like a real long shot. I really didn’t think it was going to sell or get made.”

She almost sold it a few times, but it never felt right to her, or that it was the right time. Then, in September 2024, the show was ordered by Apple TV. After populating the writers’ room with comedy and drama writers to hone the tone of the show, a perfect balance of horror and comedy, the series was well underway. Plus, Hiro Murai, whose credits include Atlanta and Barry, was hired to direct some episodes, bringing his knowledge of deadpan gallows humor and cinematic visuals to set. A lethal combination for the show that stars newly-minted Emmy record-holder Matthew Rhys as Tom Loftis, mayor of the New England island town plagued by a historic curse.

“There’s stuff in the writers room that will make me laugh so hard, but I’m like, we cannot do that because you just won’t take anything seriously,” Dippold said in an August interview with THR of walking the line between horror and comedy. “But sometimes, we’ll break our own rules — like the boogeyman is kind of ridiculous. I try to let the scary be scary and let the humor come from character, and a big goal of the show, between the cast and the direction, is treating it very seriously. You’re never treating it like a joke. This is life and death to the characters. Everything should feel high stakes and then finding moments of humor throughout that … it’s constantly making sure these two things are feeding off of each other and not undercutting the other one, and that also means doing horror that doesn’t get too bleak. You don’t want the audience to feel too bad, so then it’s hard for them to come back around and laugh.”

Add Rhys and Stephen Root, as well as newcomer Kate O’Flynn (both Root and O’Flynn won Emmys for their performances as well), to the mix, and you have a show that quickly became a hit through word of mouth and excellent reviews (THR‘s review called it “Pawnee-style coziness and Derry-esque chills”), and despite rolling out at the end of April, only one month before the eligibility cutoff for the Emmys, the show gained momentum and quickly became an Emmys frontrunner.

As THR‘s executive awards editor Scott Feinberg noted in his Emmys analysis, “Rarely, if ever, has a show come out of nowhere so late in the season and then dominated to this extent.”

What led to the surge, then? “It’s a comedy/horror hybrid that debuted in a moment when horror is all the rage; indeed, it was being consumed at the same time that the films Obsession and Backrooms were becoming surprise mega-blockbusters. It’s also fresh, in terms of its story and style and talent, whereas [fellow best comedy series nominee] Hacks, in the view of numerous TV Academy members with whom I spoke, had grown to feel a bit stale by the end of its run. (A common refrain was, “How many times can you break up and reunite Deborah and Ava without it getting old?”) And lastly, the TV Academy likes crowning new shows even more than celebrating departing ones — four times versus two over the past decade in the best comedy category, for those keeping track at home.”

The marketing teams behind Widow’s Bay did an excellent job campaigning as well. Not only did they have events promising a “Widow’s Bay experience” and having cast and crew attend, but Rhys and Dippold’s interviews with the press proved charming, funny and enlightening. Rhys, for example, shocked some new fans when he revealed his Welsh accent in his many on-camera interviews. He also did a perfectly-timed New York Times interview that was very well-received, titled “The Charming, Amusing, Surprisingly Low-Confidence Matthew Rhys,” as well as cute joint interviews with his wife and fellow nominee Keri Russell that played very well among Emmy voters (and non-Emmy voters).

In these interviews, Rhys showed the world he had comedic chops as well, which led to his lead acting in a comedy win, as well as his limited series acting win for The Beast In Me, making him the first male performer to win two lead acting Emmys in a single year.

Dippold said that the actors really made the writing soar. In the August interview with THR, she said, “This show really does not allow much room for error. I’ve written many broad comedies, and you can get away with stuff, but this show, if there’s a moment that feels too broad or unearned, or you don’t buy it, it takes you out of it immediately. So I find this very hard to write for that reason. But you also need really good dramatic actors to sell these absurd, absolutely ludicrous situations.”

Enter Rhys, an actor known for his dramatic side, with credits like The Americans (which earned him an Emmy in 2018). “It was a real swing and a lucky guess because I had never seen him do anything comedic before. But I know he’s an amazing actor. I pitched him how the season would go, and he just seemed to get it. There’s something about him. He’s my favorite kind of person, which is a spicy, kind person,” said Dippold, adding “he’s very good at swearing.”

In terms of Root, Dippold praised: “There’s like no one that knows towing the line better than Stephen Root.”

Come Monday night’s Emmys (and let’s include the wins from the Creative Arts Emmys the weekend before), and Widow’s Bay completely dominated the comedy categories, winning the big comedy prize, lead actor, supporting actor, supporting actress, writing, directing, casting, cinematography, guest actress (Betty Gilpin), score, music supervision, production design, sound editing and sound mixing.

Season two is well underway: Dippold revealed backstage at the Emmys that they were on week seven of production.