British actress Kate O’Flynn won the Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series for Apple TV’s brilliant breakout horror-comedy “Widow’s Bay,” earning her first Emmy on her very first nomination.
“Thank you so much. Oh wow, gosh!” O’Flynn said to the audience while accepting the award on stage. “I want to thank all the residents of ‘Widow’s Bay’ in front of and behind the camera. You’re amazing. This is the role of a lifetime. Thank you, (executive producer) Katie [Dippold] for trusting me to play a saucy broad like Patricia. And Apple [TV] for saying yes.”
O’Flynn stars as Patricia, the more than slightly socially awkward chief assistant to Matthew Rhys’ Mayor Tom Loftis in Katie Dippold’s genre-bending series. Set on a remote New England island, “Widow’s Bay” follows Tom’s attempt to revive the town by turning it into a tourist destination — despite decades of local stories warning that the area is cursed.
O’Flynn, known for acting in British stage and screen, had never previously been nominated for an Emmy. Her performance as Patricia has also emerged as one of the most fantastic roles on the new series.
As increasingly strange and supernatural events begin happening, Patricia becomes one of Tom’s closest friends, who tries to figure out what is really happening.
Rhys had incredible success as well, accepting his second Emmy of the night, for best actor in a comedy series for Widow’s Bay.
The Welsh actor, who earlier in the night, won best actor in a limited series for “The Beast in Me,” is now the first actor to have won the lead acting Emmy across all three genres, since he won back in 2018 for the drama, “The Americans,” and the first man to win two lead-acting awards in a single night.
In his comedy actor acceptance speech, Rhys echoed his co-star, comedy supporting actor winner Stephen Root, in his complement for Dippold, mentioning her “depraved and twisted mind.”
“Her genius really does live in the recesses of her disturbed brain,” Rhys said. “[This win] is also because of my hero, (executive producer and director) Hiro Murai, who helmed us so beautifully and deftly.”
He also thanked the executives behind the series, including Apple’s Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, his agent and his sister, who was with him at the Emmys, and “the great and good people of his hometown, Wales.
“We are a small but mighty nation,” he said proudly.
Speaking backstage in the Emmys’ pressroom, the actor quipped that Dippold had her eye on the award from the first day of production. “Katie, on the first day of filming, said if we don’t win enough Emmys to sink a fucking ship,” Rhys joked.
The series is one of the year’s biggest Emmy breakouts, earning 19 nominations in its first season, winning eight awards at the earlier Emmy ceremonies, including guest actress for Betty Gilpin.
