‘Widow’s Bay’ Season 2 Ups Jeff Hiller To Series Regular

EXCLUSIVE: Widow’s Bay fans can look forward to a lot more laughs (and possibly screams) with Jeff Hiller in future, Deadline has learned. Come Season 2, Hiller will make the jump from guest star to series regular on the mega-hit much Emmy-nominated show about a haunted Massachusetts island.

Hiller, who met Widow’s Bay creator Katie Dippold in an improv group some 25 years ago, recently told Deadline that he’d initially sent in a self-tape without telling his old friend. Then, when he was cast, Dippold had warned him that the only role available was a Town Hall staffer who dies. Later, as her script evolved, she called him and said, “Do you mind if I don’t kill you?”

In the show, Hiller plays Dale, a Town Hall staffer under Matthew Rhys‘ Mayor Tom Loftis. And in Season 1, Hiller became particularly celebrated for Dale’s iconic scream: “This place is a death trap! RUN!”

“I have a shorthand with Katie,” Hiller said, recalling their improv years. “She liked when I would melt down and scream. The whole team would always make me do these dramatic monologues where I would end up screaming and crying on the ground. It was a funny bit. And when I read that, I was like, ‘Oh, she wants this.’”

The Apple TV comedy series has garnered a total 19 Emmy nominations, making it the frontrunner of all the new shows this year. And Hiller is Emmy-nominated this year for his guest role of Larry in another Apple TV show, Pluribus — Vince Gilligan’s drama series about a mind-melding pandemic starring Rhea Seehorn as its virus-immune lead. Hiller also won an Emmy last year for his supporting role of Joel in Somebody, Somewhere.

This past weekend, Hiller told Deadline that slipping into improv on Widow’s Bay was “actually very tempting. And I didn’t always succeed. They said, ‘We’ll cut around that.’” But one bit made the final cut, he revealed. “One that I think I’m weirdly proud of that literally no one has said that they liked is when Tom is talking and saying, ‘I don’t think this microphone is on.’ And then I say, ‘I can hear you.’”

Dippold is currently in the Widow’s Bay Season 2 writers’ room and has yet to reveal exact plans, but Rhys said the Season 1 finale is “the ultimate setup, I think, for a Season 2. Massive cliffhanger. I’m just talking personally now. A father who now knows the folklore is true. Therefore, if he suddenly leaves the island, his son will die. He realizes he has the Scooby-Doo mission. It’s like, OK, how do we figure this out? What breaks the curse?”

The show also stars Stephen Root as local fisherman Wyck. As for what he’d like to see in Season 2, Root told us, “I would love to know more about the backstory. What made Wyck Wyck? What kind of scenes did he see when he was a kid or a young man to make him to want to be a protector of the island to get him to the point where he couldn’t stand it anymore and he said, ‘No, I’m not sitting back anymore. I’m going to tell this mayor that I don’t respect, that I’m going to come out and I’m going to sound the [warning] siren.’”

And Kate O’Flynn, who has become another fan favorite as Patricia, said, “Next season, I don’t know, but I would love to play a British ancestor of Patricia or something… I like the idea of wigging up and doing a bit of period drama. Why not?”

Widow’s Bay Emmy nominees include lead actor Rhys, supporting actors Root, O’Flynn and Dale Dickey as Rosemary, and guest stars Hamish Linklater as the island’s ancient founder Richard Warren and Betty Gilpin as Warren’s wife Sarah, alongside celebrated co-stars Kevin Carroll as Sheriff Bechir, K Callan as secretary June and Kingston Rumi Southwick as Loftis’ son Evan.

All episodes of Widow’s Bay Season 1 are streaming on Apple TV.