'Widow's Bay' creator Katie Dippold

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximumfun.org and is distributed by NPR.

**Jesse Thorn** (0:21)
It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn. So there is a new show on streaming. It's called Widow's Bay. Been out for a little bit, maybe you heard about it. Here's the premise. Widow's Bay is a small picturesque island off the coast of New England. The tiny town on this island has it all. Beautiful buildings, charming seafood shacks, eccentric locals, and also a dark, possibly supernatural past. If this premise sounds familiar to you, well, congratulations. That means that you have seen, like, one of 25% of the horror films and TV shows of the last 40 years. I mean, Pet Sematary, Beetlejuice, The Lighthouse, Jaws.
Widow's Bay nods to all those great works and to others, but it's also nothing like them. First of all, it's funny, not like scary movie funny. The jokes when a character does tell a joke are subtle. There are a lot of visual gags. Nothing is really spoofed.
That's because the show doesn't spoof anything. And because the show doesn't spoof anything, it's also legitimately kind of scary. People are in real peril. Creepy ghosty figures appear in frame and then vanish. Like here's a good example. I'll try not to give you too much spoiler. In one episode, a supernatural humanoid creature appears. And throughout this episode, nobody on the island knows where they stand with that creature. In one moment, it's motionless, still and brooding and ominous, and then later it weeps over the loss of the loved ones that it once had. And then at another point, the creature trades obscenities with Matthew Reese, who plays the mayor of Widow's Bay. F*** me?
No! F*** you!
Until they both feel like they've said their piece. It is an unusual television program. Katie Dippold created the show. She is also my guest. She worked on Parks and Recreation. She wrote the 2016 Ghostbusters revival and the 2013 action comedy The Heat. All great stuff, but Widow's Bay, absolutely a masterpiece. I'm so excited to talk with Katie Dippold about the show. Let's get right into it.
Katie Dippold, welcome to Bullseye. I'm so happy to have you on the show and I enjoyed your show so much.

**Katie Dippold** (2:43)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

**Jesse Thorn** (2:45)
You are like a scary things enthusiast. Yes.
I'm not.

**Katie Dippold** (2:50)
Oh, really?

**Jesse Thorn** (2:50)
I'm scared of them.

**Katie Dippold** (2:51)
Do you like horror movies at all?

**Jesse Thorn** (2:54)
I like The Lighthouse.

**Katie Dippold** (2:56)
Okay. Great movie.

**Jesse Thorn** (2:58)
But that movie was just more bonkers than anything else.

**Katie Dippold** (3:00)
Yes.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:02)
And it was still a little intense for me.

**Katie Dippold** (3:04)
Okay. Yeah.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:06)
But my daughter likes scary movies, and my poor wife has to watch them with her.

**Katie Dippold** (3:11)
Oh, that's a nice mom.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:13)
It's really intense. For my what? My daughter's unbothered by it. For my wife, very intense.

**Katie Dippold** (3:18)
Yes. Okay.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:19)
Did you watch horror things as a child?

**Katie Dippold** (3:20)
Yes. It was a real big part of my childhood. I feel like my family really came together watching a horror movie.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:27)
Everybody together?

**Katie Dippold** (3:29)
We really did do that often. Even when I was very little, I remember sometimes there would be something that wasn't for me, I'd be told. Friday the 13th, for some reason, I wasn't allowed to watch. I mean, I was six years old.
No one will ever know why. Yeah. But I remember still, my dad would walk down the hallway, go past my room and go, I couldn't help himself.

**Jesse Thorn** (3:57)
Did you like it?

**Katie Dippold** (3:59)
I did. I always found it exciting and fun.
There's also a prankster element to my family. When I was in kindergarten, my class picture, I'm in a wheelchair because I broke my leg really badly. I was in the hospital for three nights and my dad said, he waited to know he was in the room. He's like, I don't know how we're going to get this wheelchair home. I guess we're going to have to tie a rope from the bumper to the wheelchair and get you home like that.
Never told me he was joking. For the rest of my stay, I was just sweating thinking about this car ride home swinging around the road on this wheelchair. Finally, when they put me in the backseat of the car, I was like, Oh, thank God. Oh, thank God. And so I feel like there are something about horror movies that I do find like a similar kind of magic trick prankster element that both my parents loved to bring to the home.