{"id":1023202,"date":"2026-08-25T13:54:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T13:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1023202\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T13:54:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T13:54:30","slug":"stephen-root-explains-what-makes-widows-bay-special","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1023202\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Root explains what makes ‘Widow’s Bay’ special"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to acting, hands don’t get much steadier than Stephen Root<\/a>. <\/p>\n

After getting his start in the New York theater world, Root parlayed bit roles in movies like Ghost and Crocodile Dundee II into steady work in Los Angeles on TV sets, before ultimately landing NewsRadio<\/a> in the mid-’90s. The sitcom would eventually run for five seasons and end right around the time that perhaps his most iconic film role, that of Milton in Mike Judge’s Office Space<\/a>, was debuting in theaters. <\/p>\n

The confluence of the two projects \u2014 along with Root’s voice role on King of the Hill \u2014 could have been a moment that cemented Root as a go-to comedic actor. Instead, he decided to swerve. “By the time I’d finished\u00a0NewsRadio, I really wanted to not step right into another sitcom, because I didn’t want to be the sitcom guy for the next 20 years,” Root said. “You have to remind people in the business that you do other things.”<\/p>\n

\"I<\/a> \"Sally<\/a> <\/p>\n

For the next near-three decades, Root has decidedly been doing “other things.” In fact, he’s done just about everything \u2014 from embodying racial envy in Get Out, to managing a hitman on Barry, and becoming a frequent collaborator of Joel and Ethan Coen, appearing in five of their films.<\/p>\n

\"\"Stephen Root in ‘Get Out’Universal Pictures<\/p>\n

But all of that, in a way, has led to Wyck, the hard-drinking seen-it-all inhabitant of Widow’s Bay for creator Katie Dippold<\/a> and director Hiro Murai<\/a>. The role, for which Root earned his second Emmy nomination, is a unique one for Root, who said the character comes closer to who he really is than most before it. “Usually I’m pretty deep in there, and you’re not seeing a lot of the humanity you could see in a character,” Root said. “I think I put a lot more of just me into that character.”<\/p>\n

Gold Derby:\u00a0I want to focus mostly on\u00a0Widow’s Bay, but I also want to place it in the context of your career. What is it about you, and the way that you like working, that has dictated the shape of your career? Because you work so much, and I have to pressume you just like the work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I came up through theater, and my first big job was the National Shakespeare Company, which is a bus-and-truck company out of New York, right when I came out of college. So I came through that kind of discipline, where you’re doing three plays on the road, you’re double-cast in each thing, and you have to have a certain discipline for that. And any show you’re doing in theater \u2014 even though you’re doing the same words every night \u2014 it’s a different audience reaction every night. Somebody you react to in acting is reacting differently, so it’s different every night. I loved that.<\/p>\n

\"\"Stephen Root in ‘Ghost’Paramount Pictures<\/p>\n

When I transitioned to film and TV in L.A., that was a complete learning experience for me. I’d done some movies in New York, a couple of big ones. I did\u00a0Ghost\u00a0and\u00a0Crocodile Dundee II. But by the time I got to L.A. after a long tour, the casting directors here didn’t care how many Broadway shows you’d done. “Can you deliver a line in a sitcom?” That’s a different animal. I learned that through finally getting onto\u00a0NewsRadio\u00a0and that great ensemble. In that sense, it’s almost half theater. You’re playing to an audience of 200 and to the camera, so you can go really small or really big.<\/p>\n

From the outside, it would seem that you career changed drastically with the one-two punch of\u00a0NewsRadio\u00a0and\u00a0Office Space. Was that your perception as well?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was my perception, because the\u00a0Office Space\u00a0thing came at the time when Blockbuster was king, and people were renting movies. That was a little movie that became a big blockbuster type of movie, because people could just go and see it tomorrow, which hadn’t really happened before that. So that changed the trajectory of what I was doing. By the time I’d finished\u00a0NewsRadio, I really wanted to not step right into another sitcom, because I didn’t want to be the sitcom guy for the next 20 years. You have to remind people in the business that you do other things, so I turned down some comedy stuff and waited around a little bit and did single dramatic things until I finally got a couple of years on\u00a0The West Wing. That, to me, was another seasonal change in my career. It was like, “Oh, OK, he can do drama as well,” in terms of an audience seeing me do that, instead of being the comedy guy. That changed things for me.<\/p>\n

\"\"Stephen Root in ‘Office Space’20th Century Fox<\/p>\n

What does having the trust of a creative voice, like a Mike Judge or the Coens, do for you in terms of what you need to do as an actor? Is it that you can trust their sensibility? Or that you believe they know what you can give them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it goes both ways. To be able to work with the Coen brothers<\/a> five times, I trust anything they do, because I was a big fan before I even got to work with them. But yes, it’s trust in both directions. They hire you because they know what you’re probably going to bring to it. They’ll let you give your gut performance, and then they’ll nudge it around. With a professional actor, that’s what you have to do. You can’t say, “Well, you’ve got to cock your head here, and you’re going to go like that there,” because that’s not going to go over well for somebody who’s been doing it for 30 years.<\/p>\n

So coming to\u00a0Widow’s Bay, when was first contact between you and the project? How did the conversation begin to get you into the show?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was through agents and managers just talking about the role. I think I came into the discussion a little later than a lot of people, but as soon as I read the script and knew that Hiro [Murai] was going to executive produce and direct \u2014 he’d directed me on\u00a0Barry\u00a0\u2014 I said, “Well, that’s the safest hands you can be in.” I didn’t know Katie [Dippold]’s work except for\u00a0Parks and Recreation. But then you read the script and you go, “That’s a lot of familiar things coming out in a completely original way.” So we were thrilled to get every script and see it. I didn’t want to know too much. I would concentrate on my stuff, because I want to see it when it comes out. I don’t want to bother my brain too much with it. I want to see how it all is put together, and they put it together brilliantly.<\/p>\n

\"KateKate O’Flynn, Stephen Root, and Matthew Rhys in Widow’s BayApple TV<\/p>\n

The show has such a deep mythology, but it also gets so much humor out of just hinting at details and then moving on.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s the subtlety of the character humor that, I think, is the draw. After a couple of episodes, you go, “Oh, I love this. I love that.” So it becomes a water-cooler thing, and people stand around going, “Yeah, I loved that. Did you see that on the wall?” So it becomes a water-cooler show.<\/p>\n

At this point in your career, by the time you were being approached for\u00a0Widow’s Bay, did you have a preference in terms of the kind of job you take? Were you looking for another television show?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My preference, as I’ve gotten into my 60s and 70s, is for a great script, and I don’t care what medium it’s in. It could be animation, it could be TV, could be a play, could be a movie. The script is really the first thing for me to get excited about, then get excited about who’s going to do it, then who’s going to direct it. If all those things fall together, then I’m excited about it, and I don’t care what medium it’s in.<\/p>\n

\"StephenStephen Root in ‘Widow’s Bay’Apple TV<\/p>\n

You mentioned Widow’s Bay doing familiar tropes in a unique way. You have this character, Wyck, who’s the show’s Quint. What was it about him \u2014 taking Hiro or Katie out of the question, trusting the creatives \u2014 that made you think, “OK, this is interesting. I can do something with this”?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fact that I could put more of myself into that character than I normally get to do. Usually I’m pretty deep in there, and you’re not seeing a lot of the humanity you could see in a character. I think I put a lot more of just me into that character, because Katie had told me, “You had a girlfriend. There is deep disappointment in your life.” That’s something that was really attractive. This isn’t just a drunk guy spouting doom all over the place. He’s really a depressed guy who has taken it upon himself to protect the island. I would love to see more backstory of this character. That was attractive.<\/p>\n

When you’re working with directors or a showrunner these days, what are the qualities that instill confidence in you as you’re getting to know a collaborator and that make you feel like you’re in safe hands?<\/strong><\/p>\n

What I love very much about Hiro and his direction is his calm demeanor, because you can tell he’s a deep thinker. If he has a note for you, it’s very specific. I remember him directing me in\u00a0Barry. There’s a scene where I’m waiting for Barry to come back. I don’t know whether he’s alive or not. We did the scene once, and he said, “Yeah, I see what you’re doing, but what I need from you is life or death. If this guy doesn’t come back, you’re losing your livelihood, because then you have to go out and find another guy. So what I want to see from you is real terror that he’s not going to come back, and when he comes back, it’s just, ‘Oh my God.'” That changed the whole thing for me.<\/p>\n

\"\"Stephen Root and Bill Hader on ‘Barry’HBO<\/p>\n

What does it mean for you to have something you’re a part of embraced in a big way, like this show? You can be proud of the work, happy with the time you spent on set. But how do you process that kind of reception?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because I’d been on a show right before it that I thought was amazingly written, and that I got an Emmy nomination for, it wasn’t as overwhelming as it was the first time. What I appreciated was the number of nominations the show got, because that means the whole canopy of what everybody was going for worked. So it wasn’t weirdly overwhelming to me. I was just happy. I think I was happier that Dale [Dickey] got a nomination, because here’s somebody who’s been working at it for so long, and I’ve been working at it for so long. So I was so pleased that she got recognized. So many people got recognized, but especially Dale.<\/p>\n

I feel like there’s a bit of a kinship between you and Dale, because from the audience’s perspective, I know both of you as such steady hands. You’re seen as a really consistent performer. What would you chalk that up to?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We try to ground yourself in reality. If you do that, you can’t really go wrong if the script is great. If you can just be a human being in a strange situation, or in a good situation, or whatever \u2014 just be a human. And [Wyck] is very human.<\/p>\n

Something I’m always interested to talk about with film and TV vets is how the industry has changed in the last 10 years. There’s been a contraction for sure, especially within television. From your perspective \u2014 you’ve had a very fruitful career, working consistently \u2014 what changes do you sense?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I sense a change that I’m not happy with, in terms of upcoming actors. You’re now in the world of self-tape, and that’s the only way producers are seeing you these days, instead of in the room. They don’t want to take the time to be in the room. The casting directors say, “Yes, we can see more people that way,” but what you can’t see is your personality. When you’re going in to audition for a role, which I’ve been able to do my whole career, that’s kind of gone now. You’re not able to show the best part of you in the room. Also, with a self-tape, you’re not able to direct the person. Are they directable? You might turn in the most brilliant tape, and it’s fantastic \u2014 “OK, that was good. So let’s give him a little bit more angst here. Can you do that?” You can only do that in a room, with a director and somebody reading with you. You can’t do it on a self-tape. So I’m a strong proponent of at least one part of the audition being in a room. You take away the humanity of the moment, of you and me connecting, saying, “Yeah, I can see what this guy’s about.” You can’t do that on a Zoom or on a self-tape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it comes to acting, hands don’t get much steadier than Stephen Root. After getting his start in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1023203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[368240,409407,30046,171,408039,339716,409408,58078,21115,173,67,132,68,300536],"class_list":["post-1023202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-2026-emmys","tag-coen-brothers","tag-emmys","tag-entertainment","tag-hiro-murai","tag-katie-dippold","tag-newsradio","tag-office-space","tag-stephen-root","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-widows-bay"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117156493439313827","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1023203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}