Prolific TV director and producer Hiro Murai found himself in the middle of a literal storm while working on Apple TV’s new horror-comedy series Widow’s Bay.
“Without spoilers, there’s a lot of Arashi stuff coming up this season, which was always very intimidating for me on paper, because it’s really hard to simulate those things and actually execute them,” Murai told Variety in an interview ahead of the show’s third episode premiere on Wednesday. “But we built it in a way that we were very happy with the outcome. It was painful, but it was really fun to pull it off. It was a very large-scale production that was tasked with setting the entire episode up by storm.”
“Widow’s Bay” stars Matthew Rhys as Mayor Tom Loftis, the leader of the titular quaint island town 40 miles off the coast of New England. It’s a difficult community with no Wi-Fi, spotty cell phone reception, and superstitious locals who believe their island is cursed. Unfortunately for Loftis, the residents’ suspicions turned out to be correct when tourists finally started coming to town.
Murai became involved with the show when creator Katie Dippold approached her with a spec script she had submitted to win a job on NBC’s Parks and Recreation, which she had held for more than a decade.
“This is something she’s had for a really long time, but in light of all the adventurous half-hour shows that have come out over the last 10 years, she tried to reinvent it and reinvent it in a different way,” Murai said.
In his initial conversation with Dippold about “Widow’s Bay,” Murai, best known for his work on FX’s “The Bear” and his long working relationship with Donald Glover on projects such as FX’s “Atlanta” and Amazon’s “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” TV series and short film “Guava Island,” was already on board with the show’s unique tone.
“The idea of combining horror and comedy has always been interesting to me, and that’s something I tried a little bit with ‘Atlanta,'” Murai said. “I’ve heard other people say this, but I think there’s a weird relationship between horror and comedy. It’s about breaking the tension, and how do you break that tension? But it’s very difficult to do that well. I think horror and comedy can sometimes undermine each other. If the horror isn’t serious, it’s not really scary. And if it’s too scary, it takes you away from the comedy a little bit.”
That “challenge” in the heart of “Widow’s Bay” was “really exciting” for Murai.
“Katie’s script is so unique, I’ve never read anything like it before,” Murai said. “It felt like real people experiencing real events, but it also felt like we were tapping into an older era of television. Something about the structure of town halls and this work environment. And it felt nostalgic, but without being mushy.”
Although the 10-episode “Widow’s Bay” was picked up by Apple TV, Murai’s television home remains at FX Networks. The producer and director recently confirmed to Variety exclusively that he has re-signed a first-look deal with the Disney-owned brand through his Chum Films production banner, which he launched in February 2025 with production partner Carver Karaszewski.
“Hiro has the rare ability to move this medium forward while telling stories that feel deeply intimate while also resonating on a broader cultural level,” FX Entertainment President Nick Glad said in a statement to Variety. “His curiosity, generosity and fearlessness as a storyteller make him a natural fit for FX, and we are proud to continue to be his creative home.”
Murai said he has stuck with John Landgraf’s FX because of their approach to making television during a very turbulent time for the industry.
“Television is a very strange format because it takes so many people to build an ecosystem in which a show can grow,” Murai said. “And the executive and network perspective is very inseparable from that. And I think the way FX approaches collaboration with artists is very artist-driven. I think they build around the passion and intent of the artists. So I’ve always really appreciated that about them. I started working in TV with FX, so I learned how to put together TV shows with them. There’s also a loyalty and a good feeling there.”
Along with the release of “Widow’s Bay,” Murai is already developing several other titles, but there are none that he can talk about in detail yet.
“We are working on several different projects, and they are in different pilot stages in different genres,” Murai said. “One is a grounded science fiction project and the other is an experimental half-hour comedy. We’re always talking about a few different things, but you never know what will surface first.”
Murai says his early days in television on “Atlanta” really shaped how he approaches future projects and why he doesn’t feel constrained by the old TV standards of hour-long dramas versus half-hour comedies.
“‘Atlanta’ is a half-hour format, and in a sense it’s structured like a sitcom,” Murai said. “But at the time, I didn’t really know what was expected of a half-hour comedy. When I was making this show, it was blissful ignorance, where we were doing something that was exciting to us and just trying to fit it into a half-hour format. So that show taught me how stretchy and resilient that format is. As long as you have an interesting story and you have interesting characters, you can do anything.”
As for current inspirations, he’s a big fan of Tim Robinson’s HBO comedy “The Chair Company” (as well as Robinson’s “I Think You Should Leave” on Netflix), and has recently been rewatching the WB classic “Dawson’s Creek.”
Murai sees the work as “a bit of 2000s nostalgia, but also a meta teen drama that feels like that time,” adding, “And just as a cultural artifact, it was really fun to look back on. I was in college when the show was airing.”
