Patricia’s Curse Explained by Kate O’Flynn (Exclusive)

Widow’s Bay unleashed a new piece of haunted lore in Episode 4 in the form of a spell cast on Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), the loyal public servant who was determined to host a killer party. The party did almost turn deadly thanks to the cursed book guiding her through the planning.

Patricia is a lifelong Widow’s Bay native who was nearly killed by the “boogeyman” who killed a group of her classmates in high school. The friends of the murdered girls deeply resent Patricia because they think she’s lying about the boogeyman coming to her house. How did she survive when no one else did? She’s struggled with her fellow alums ever since, but she hoped that planning the perfect party could solve everything. And the party-planning book she found certainly convinced her that was possible.

The cursed book altered Patricia’s reality to horrific effect. The punch she thought she was making was actually made of animal game, not fruit, and the book’s spell possessed all of those who drank it and sent them on a mindless walk directly into a body of water. Patricia saved everyone by burning the book in a massive pyre. They came to standing in a lake, not knowing how they got there or that Patricia saved them. She met up with her boss and friend, mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) and Wyck (Stephen Root), at the end of the episode and realized who really cares about her.

O’Flynn tells TV Insider that Carrie and The Wicker Man were big horror influences for this episode. Here, she explains everything about Patricia and this spooky episode and teases what’s to come when we see her next in this wonderfully and refreshingly original horror-comedy.

Do you think Patricia has always struggled to fit in with her classmates in her town, or was the boogeyman incident the start of her woes?

Kate O’Flynn: There was talk that actually she was friends with Kris before the boogeyman thing, but I can’t remember whether that was something that Katie [Dippold] still thought was right for their relationship or not. But I do think Patricia probably has always struggled a bit fitting in. She can’t be anything different to who she is. She’s trying to please people but has no idea how to shape shift. And then having the experience with the boogeyman and no one believing her has just magnified that. It’s just turned the dial up on her social awkwardness to 10, and she’s just stayed stuck in that. She’s not been able to move away to college and reinvent herself. She’s stuck in that hierarchy and dynamic of an awful high school experience.

It wouldn’t have to be part of the character, but I wonder if you guys talked about the possibility that Patricia is neurodivergent because she kind of gives that vibe to me.

We never talked about it and I never diagnose any characters that I play unless the writer has, because sometimes you put a label on and it can kind of narrow who that character is in certain situations sometimes I find. So I never diagnosed her and Katie never talked to me about it. So I kind of just left it open.

I feel like she could be read that way.

Totally. I can see that.

How much has people not believing her boogeyman experience impacted how she interacts with the world?

Well, I think it’s really fed into her. She’s stuck in this victim mode. Katie described her as an introvert wanting attention and her wanting to be believed, and she’s kind of setting traps subconsciously for people. She’s not telling people what she’s feeling, but she’s expecting people to pick up on it. And if they don’t, then, “Oh, great. Yeah, same old, same old.” She’s stuck in that loop and that’s because of the boogeyman thing. It’s a huge traumatic episode for her that never goes away.

And it really happened, right? There’s no reason to believe that she’s not telling the truth about this?

No, it really happened. But some of the direction from Sam Donovan, who directed Episode 4, there were different takes. And when she’s talking to the [woman] who’s new to the island, she wants to tell her story. There were different variations of how I would tell that. Sometimes you’d believe that it happened to her and other times it was like question mark of, is this person a bit mad?

Do you know which version got into the final episode?

It was all such a blur. I have no idea, but it definitely happened to her.

Does Patricia have any desire to leave Widow’s Bay?

I think her biggest fear is remaining alone. She’s always trying to connect, and I think she finds her gang. I don’t know if she would leave the island if she had the choice. She wants it to stay the same. There is great comfort in having a cause and being united with these people and you’ve got something to talk about and something to do every day. That’s what she loves. The idea of then that all being over and her being able to leave the island, I’m not sure.

I’m sure she’d want some things to change about life on Widows Bay, but it seems like home to her still.

If you’ve never left a place, it’s kind of scary, actually, if you really thought about it.

Do you think she’s the type to read her email invite one million times before sending it? Rate her general level of anxiety.

Yes. She would read that one million times. She would go over things. Going to the party at the beginning of Episode 4, I imagine she’s got several conversation openers in her head that she could use. She’s hopeful, but she goes in and clocks Kris straight away and she’s on the back foot, but she’s still trying. So, yeah, she preps things.

She’s so pure of heart. Poor thing. Do you think she’s ever been in love?

Well, I don’t know if that’s for me to say because Katie and I never discussed that, but that question’s come up about her romantic background. I think with Patricia, she’s surprising. She’s not someone to be pitied, actually. I imagine she’s got a few secrets or potential for romance. I think she’s a fully fleshed out person, if that makes sense, but I haven’t spoken to Katie about it.

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She’s not to be underestimated for sure. Is the book and the terror that comes with it a different kind of ghoul than Patricia’s ever encountered? Or has she heard of this as part of the Widow’s Bay lore?

Well, she’s not clocking it. She doesn’t clock it at all. It doesn’t ever enter her head until it’s too late that this is a cursed book, that she’s under a spell, so my take is probably not. It is something that she’s not come across before, having come across a lot of things.

And she’s a full believer in all of the lore of the town?

Yeah, totally.

So, she’s under this spell, but she thinks she’s wearing a tiara at the party. We learn that she’s not, but unpack why she would wear a tiara to an un-themed party anyway.

That’s a lot to do with wanting it to be special. She’s probably dreamt of this moment in different iterations throughout her life. It’s like prom. There’s something Carrie-esque about it. It does kind of remind me of Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. I remember playing that character sort of dressed like Laura Wingfield, if that makes sense. The shape of the dress and the shoes that aren’t quite right. There’s a fragility to it and an open want for it to be special that’s kind of childlike that just feels right for that scene.

I was going to say it feels childlike. It feels like the boogeyman experience robbed her of her childhood. Of course, she survived, but it robbed her of her innocence. It kind of feels like she’s stuck at a younger age emotionally.

Emotionally, possibly. In the party thing, in the social scene of things, she’s been such an outcast that she is not adept at it, so there is a purity to that moment. I don’t know if she’s like a child in all aspects of her life. I don’t think so, but there’s definitely that aspect of her for sure.

I don’t think she is in every aspect, no. I think in certain moments, especially when she’s with her former classmates, she reverts to her teen self again because they’re being mean teen girls to her.

And I think that happens. It’s the same like when you’re back with your family of origin, isn’t it? You just fall into it and you can’t escape it. And she literally can’t escape it. She’s with them all the time. She sees them in the coffee shops all the time. She has been stuck in those formative years. She’s never been able to escape.

I feel like her friendships with her coworkers gives her an escape.

That’s where she finds herself. She finds meaning in her job. She finds they’re all kind of outsiders there. And with Tom and Wyck, they’ve got their own pain. They’re outsiders. They’re not like the popular kids. There is a connecting thread between them. And I’d say Rosemary [Dale Dickey] and Dale [Jeff Hiller] as well, and they’re trying to do good for the community. There’s less judgment there in the town hall.

I definitely would want her crew to be working in government rather than Kris’s crew, that’s for sure. They seem to care more about people. So, talk about the choreography of the big scene at the fire at the lake. What were some of the challenges of filming that?

It was just the cinematographer for that episode, and him and Sam just worked together so brilliantly. The challenges were kind of physical. It was just running and to be honest, I had a lot of fun in that scene because it just felt like being a kid playing imaginary games where you were trying to save people. The difficulty was just repeating it. But other than that, I did love it.

Did you have a massive pyre?

There was a shape, but that was all done in post. There was a triangle shape with a light, so I knew what I was looking at, but it wasn’t the pyre. That was after. But I knew it was going to be this Wicker Man-esque thing.

Do you think this episode teaches Patricia who her real friends are?

Totally. There’s something about her really striving for validation from these people that are really mean, not getting it, being in a worse position than she was at the beginning and then finding her crew. She’s starting to get over that need to be seen in a certain way because she’s at rock bottom. It’s like, I tried and I’m worse than when I began, so let’s just scrap that idea entirely. And finding this gang at the end of her story in that is huge for her.

Can you tease where the adventure takes her after this? When we get back to Patricia, what do we have in store?

Patricia, like we were saying, she’s surprising. Don’t underestimate Patricia because she’s actually someone you want in your corner. She’ll fight to the death for things she believes in and people she believes in and her community, and there’s a bravery to her. She comes into her own later on.

Widow’s Bay, Wednesdays, Apple TV