Kingston Rumi Southwick is at a dinner following a table read for his new Apple TV series, Widow’s Bay, when a tipsy producer’s assistant walks up to him. “Oh my God, are you excited?” they ask. “It’s about you.”
At the time, the 18-year-old actor had the scripts for only the first four episodes of the comedy-horror series, which centres around the mayor of a cursed island. Southwick booked the part of the mayor’s son, Evan, who acts out because he’s not allowed to leave the island. Everyone who tries to escape dies, but Evan doesn’t know that. Just like Southwick, there’s a lot that he isn’t aware of yet.
“I said something like ‘Well, I want to play [the role] well. I don’t want to play it just like all the other asshole kids in the movies,’” Southwick tells me over Zoom. He couldn’t imagine that the part would evolve to become anything more. “The assistant says, ‘You know the end, it’s all on you,’” says Southwick. “I didn’t know at all. They told me, and I was like, ‘You’re kidding.’ But the funny thing is I never saw that assistant ever again on set.”
Luckily for Southwick, the spoiler from that vanishing assistant (a Widow’s Bay–esque apparition?) wasn’t a lie. In the season 1 finale that aired Wednesday, the mayor (played by Matthew Rhys) learns that his son Evan is the last living descendant of the island’s founder—who brought the curse upon Widow’s Bay when he struck up some sort of blood pact with a dark entity. A recent season 2 renewal means that audiences will get to learn more about how Evan’s lineage affects the story to come. For now, like any teenager who left school to go work on TV sets, Southwick is just soaking in as much as he can.
“I’ve learned so much from Matthew,” Southwick says, often referring to his TV dad as “Matty.” The former Americans actor “taught me so much about [playing to] the audience,” says Southwick. “Because maybe something feels the best for us right now in this scene, but how is the audience going to take it?”
It’s an important distinction to make when you’re on a show like Widow’s Bay, which is constantly walking the line between a workplace sitcom and a Severance-like horror mystery. Will the audience laugh when they’re supposed to? Will they pull the bed covers up in front of their eyes for a scary scene just a few seconds later? But that’s Widow’s Bay’s greatest strength. Thanks to performances from Rhys, Stephen Root, and breakout stars like Kate O’Flynn and Southwick, the series created by former Parks & Recreation writer Katie Dippold is the undisputed show of the summer.
“When I was in my audition, they had this really old camcorder, and they said, ‘It’s good luck, because we shot all the auditions for The Office on this,’” Southwick says. “Then I’m doing my scene with the casting associate, and it’s the one I have with Bechir [Clemmons] of me saying, ‘Hey, can I say Fuck you, Pig’? They started laughing—and it’s not scripted or anything—so we had to restart a couple times. I was like, Well, I’m making them laugh. Maybe that’s good.”
Below, Southwick shares more about hidden Easter eggs that fans still haven’t found, acting alongside Matthew Rhys, and his role in season 2 following the finale’s big reveal.
“I’m figuring it out right now. Evan is dying to have his own independence and go do something by himself. That’s a big part of college. For me, I’m gone most of the year. A lot of my close friends are going to college for filmmaking, cinematography, and acting, but I don’t know. If I commit to a school, I can’t leave and go shoot for six months.
“I remember when I was at school and my dad pulled me out of class. My teacher came up to me and said, ‘Your dad is here to take you to the dentist.’ I get into the car and my mom and my dad are both in the car with my agent on the phone. I was like, ‘That’s weird.’ Then they said, ‘Congratulations. You booked Presumed Innocent, and your table read is in two hours.’ Crazy. But it’s like, that’s the experience I’m getting.”
“There are scenes with lines like ‘I need your baby hands to reach up my nose and pull the scorpion out.’ I’m reading it and I’m crying. I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is so horrible.’ Then we get to set with [The Chair Company director] Andrew DeYoung, and he had a lot of ideas. It was two days of shooting with Matthew, and we did it so many different ways. We did ones of me crying and reading like ‘How could you do that?’ And we did ones of me really mad, one where I’m kind of making fun of him. He used different takes from each and kind of put them together. I had never thought to do it like that—to blend [all the emotions] easier.”
“I loved the boogeyman episode. That was the actual actor for Michael Myers in the Halloween movies. I was on set those days that they were shooting just because I wanted to see the boogeyman. You’re watching him walk up the street, really slowly. You’re like, ‘Wait, should I be running?’
“Also, when Tom is on mushrooms and he had the chilli all over his shirt. I love Matty, but he looked horrible and he looked even worse in person. There was a scene that they didn’t keep in where he comes into my room and sees me and the girl that I’m supposed to be seeing on the show. He’s like, ‘What are you... It’s eight o’clock at night.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s Thursday at 3pm or something like that.’ But him walking in and looking like that? I literally could not help myself.”
“Season 2 is going to have a lot more Evan in it. It’s fun because I really want to do more horror stuff in the show—like me experiencing the horror. I’m just excited. I know that I’m in good hands. I keep calling [Dippold] like, ‘Tell me what’s going to happen!’ I think they’re going to start the writer’s room soon.”
“If you go back, you’ll see all the little things like, ‘Oh my gosh, I never would put that together.’ They were really thoughtful with every little thing that they did, and people still haven’t found certain things yet. I’ve read all the theories and stuff. There are certain things that people have gotten right and others have gotten wrong... but I don’t want to spoil it. If you listen to what’s happening, not of what people are talking about—especially in the last episode—you’ll hear what I’m talking about.”
