Superstitions are some of the most entertaining delusions in human history. It’s insane to think that one’s life should be governed by throwing salt over their shoulder to blind evil spirits or forcing eye contact during a toast so as not to tempt seven years of bad sex. But there’s a good reason why we still blow out candles on our birthdays and avoid walking under ladders. Deep down, we all believe in curses—even if the methods to ward them off don’t make any sense.
“I used to salute magpies,” Kate O’Flynn tells me about her favourite superstition. “That’s the Irish in me, and my grandma used to spit on the floor if a bird got inside.”
What’s the superstition there? “I have no idea,” she says. “But we were shopping in the supermarket, and a bird had managed to get in. The next thing we knew she just spat on the floor, the old woman. I didn’t really understand that one, but she definitely believed in it.”
I’m talking to O’Flynn about superstitions because the British actress stars on Widow’s Bay, a new horror-comedy series on Apple TV about a cursed island. The story follows a quaint community off the coast of New England that attempts to transform itself into the next Martha’s Vineyard despite various hauntings plaguing its inhabitants. Matthew Rhys leads the series as Tom Lofits, the town’s skeptic and headstrong mayor, while O’Flynn plays Patricia, his offbeat assistant. Together the pair set out with the town’s crazed believer, Wyck (Stephen Root), to find the source of the curse and survive its many evils—all while maintaining the perfect balance between laughs and scares.
Patricia is a breakout role for O’Flynn. Though the actress previously starred in BBC black comedies and performed on London’s West End in The Glass Menagerie—for which she was nominated for a Laurence Olivier Award—O’Flynn treats Widow’s Bay as her personal playground. Her combination of eyes-wide-open terror and deadpan comedy is reminiscent of Shelly Duvall in The Shining and Britt Lower on Severance. In episode 8, she bursts into action heroics like Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween when her character is chased around Widow’s Bay by a knife-wielding slasher-flick killer. Is there anything she can’t do?
“Patricia really came very clearly to me,” O’Flynn says. “I could see her when I auditioned for it, and it was a no-brainer. The quality of the writing, the storytelling—it does feel like something different is happening with this. And I’m so thrilled that people are responding to it.”
Below, the British actress discusses nailing the New England accent, finding inspiration for Patricia, and trying not to laugh during the scary scenes.
ESQUIRE: As a UK native, what did you make of Massachusetts?
KATE O’FLYNN: It’s funny. When you live somewhere your whole life, it’s hard to compare it, and going to Massachusetts for the summer for three months was a very different experience. We ended up really enjoying it. It was a slightly slower pace there. I’m from North Lancaster, and then I moved down to London when I was 18. So living in a city can be quite frenetic. But we were looking forward to coming home, and then we got home and we suddenly missed Massachusetts.
Was there a trick to nailing the New England accent? People can’t believe it when I tell them that you’re British or that Matthew Rhys is Welsh.
I listened to podcasts—Good Hang with Amy Poehler, since she’s from there. Rachel Dratch also. And I had a brilliant dialect coach, Carter Bellamy. But that was the biggest challenge. I wanted to feel comfortable enough in the accent that I could be spontaneous and react, because if I got a note from the actors or [creator] Katie [Dippold], the challenge was to be elastic enough to be spontaneous.
Matthew just goes Welsh, American, Welsh, American. And I wasn’t going to roll off and be like, “Well, I’m going to be American the whole day,” because I’d get confused. I would end the day going, “Who the hell am I?”
But I remember there’s an episode where I tried to improv the line “Form an orderly queue.” It’s like the worst choice of words you could put together for a Brit trying to do an American accent. But Matthew kept having to say “Bar Harbour,” and that’s tricky for us. It just sounds like you’re a dog barking.
Was Patricia’s look based on anything? It’s clear that there are a lot of homages to horror classics on the show.
What do you think it was based on?
Shelly Duvall.
Yeah, I had a mood board of different looks of Shelly Duvall, and even in my tape for the part they responded to it and they said, “Do another couple of takes and maybe in one of the takes, give a dash of Shelly Duvall.” So there was a sprinkle in the look and the kind of neurosis—the haunted look in her eyes.
Did you enjoy switching into the final girl/action hero role for episode 8?
It was a real relief actually, because I just had to run and scream. It was quite a straightforward task. It was tiring, but it’s like I just ran in a straight line screaming and then, “Cut!” That is my memory of episode 8. I’m just screaming and running and holding a gun. So there was something quite oddly relaxing about it.
The bit of Patricia holding the gun up to the killer until she’s sure he’s dead was so spot on.
And I love that Enya plays over it. She’s like this reclusive Irish musician in a castle. It’s just the perfect choice for her.
I couldn’t believe that the Boogeyman plot returned. I rewatched the premiere, and your character only mentions surviving a crazed killer once. I thought it was a throwaway joke, where Matthew gets the punchline—“He murdered teenage girls. You’re in your 40s, you’d be fine”—only for him to be very wrong seven episodes later.
Yeah, and I had no idea that was coming. So it was a real thrill for me. I thought, Oh my God, I get to be scream queen! But that’s what is so satisfying to watch. There will be something picked up or a joke that was in episode 1 that will come back in episode 8. You can’t miss a beat.
Do you think there’s any other pieces of Widow’s Bay lore that might return?
There was the Ungrateful Hortence Fitzgerald. Like, what was that? Who is she?
“Ugly woman who fled her wedding, backed through a window and fell to her death,” one of the townspeople says in episode 2.
You could go any which way with those characters. What I loved most is the stuff that’s in the cabinets: the weird toys and torture instruments. What is that for? I never found out. But Matthew’s really big into it. He’s had experiences in a haunted castle, and he’s quite articulate about the other realm.
Do you think there’s something about Widow’s Bay that helps the notoriously difficult combination of horror and comedy click together?
If things look too quirky, it can be off-putting. I wonder if it’s that you look at the world [of Widow’s Bay] and it’s all done in a way that feels grounded in some reality that we recognise. So you’re allowed in as the viewer. But it wasn’t so much a question for us as actors. All of us can turn quickly to funny.
Plus, when I’m scared, the two are usually combined. It’s quite a childlike trait. When they’re scared, they burst out laughing. It can become like a tick for me. I got it together enough to cobble together some takes. But I don’t know how people do it and not break.
Were there any scenes you had to play straight for suspense that you couldn’t get through without laughing?
Matthew’s reactions crack me up. But the toughest ones were the scenes with Stephen [Root]. Looking at the turkey hand drawing. Talking about Richard Warren being alive upstairs and just having been dug up. It’s these absurd situations that we have to play straight and I’m giggling like a schoolgirl.
