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Widow’s Bay has prevailed as the sleeper hit of 2026, and Kingston Rumi Southwick can’t wait for season two.

“It’s so much fun,” the 18-year-old tells The Hollywood Reporter on a recent Zoom. “I’m glad people are connecting to it.”

The actor plays Evan, son to Matthew Rhys’ Tom, in the Apple TV horror comedy series. Created by Katie Dippold, Widow’s Bay is set in a fictional — and very much cursed — New England island town and centers around Tom, the town’s mayor.

Since the show’s April premiere, it’s continued to pick up momentum both critically and in viewing. “I remember reading it for the first time and being like, I love this,” Southwick says.

The tone of Widow’s Bay is tough to land, and it very much does, but Southwick was curious about how it would turn out when filming the show. “I was watching it and thought that is exactly what I was thinking, if not better than what I imagined,” he says.

The spooky New England vibe was easy to get into for Southwick, largely due to the show filming across Massachusetts. “We would shoot in these smaller sea towns outside of Boston, in people’s houses. I would talk to the owners, and they would have their own Widow’s Bay-esque stories,” he says. “It really put you into the mindset of being in a sea town that’s haunted, so I’m glad that we shot in Massachusetts because I had never been, and the place is a very big part of the story.”

The show moved between soundstages and location shoots to really get that environment right. “You see the town and Richard Warren with his head cut off, that’s really what it looks like. You could be there today, and it’ll look basically the exact same,” says Southwick.

Dippold spent years finding the right tone of the show that would translate to audiences. It was something that stood out to Southwick when he read the script. He points to the state of horror at the moment, with franchises that continue to put out sequels and new entry points, like Obsession and Backrooms, that are also doing well.

“What Widow’s Bay did really well was it took those horror tropes and made [them] its own. It’s a very original idea,” the actor says. He also points out just how funny the show is and how hard that can be.

For Southwick, whose past credits include Presumed Innocent and 56 Days, playing Evan has been a dream. “He’s a really smart kid,” he says of Evan. “There’s so much more that Evan can be saying and would be saying and stuff, but he doesn’t let off all of his stuff he wants to say or feels like he can.”

The father-son relationship between Evan and Tom is a big driving force for Evan’s story. “There’s so many unspoken things, and I think that’s also partially because I haven’t had a mom,” Southwick says of his character. “Being able to have an emotional intelligence or awareness of being able to talk about how you feel or things like that [is important]. Evan didn’t grow up with that. He grew up with a dad who kind of wants everything to be idyllic and to be the perfect thing.”

Looking ahead, Southwick’s excited to see how Evan can grow and what might be in store for the recently announced second season. “I’m really excited for not only the mischief he gets into, but the levels that he can get to,” he says.

Southwick says he and team would talk on set about how he could evolve in the next season if he played him one way or another. The actor has also wanted to venture more into comedic work, having mostly worked on dramas. “This is a good way for me personally as an actor to ease myself into it,” he says. “I think that for season two could there’s so many more opportunities for Evan to be in a very crazy, funny situation.”