{"id":3481,"date":"2026-06-13T18:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T18:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/06\/13\/inside-widows-bays-creepiest-sound-cue-the-voice-of-the-island\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T18:15:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T18:15:00","slug":"inside-widows-bays-creepiest-sound-cue-the-voice-of-the-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/06\/13\/inside-widows-bays-creepiest-sound-cue-the-voice-of-the-island\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside \u2018Widow\u2019s Bay\u2019s\u2019 Creepiest Sound Cue: The Voice of the Island"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p> \tIn the final moments of <em>Widow\u2019s Bay<\/em>\u2018s \u201cWhat to Expect on Your Trip\u201d episode, Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), high on mushrooms, is hurled over the toilet, hands clasped in prayer as a deep, haunting sound calls to him and images of his wife, then pregnant, flash in his mind. \u201cHe\u2019s doing this earnest plea to God [to protect his son] and then we get met with this subterranean, demonic spiritual voice that is representative of the voice of the island itself,\u201d explains supervising sound editor Matt Yocum, describing the voice, on which he and his team spent the most time in the series, as the \u201cbig bad of the whole show.\u201d  \t<\/p>\n<p> \t\u201cWe don\u2019t know exactly what it\u2019s saying, but it speaks to him and you haven\u2019t heard anything like that in the show up to this point,\u201d he adds.  <\/p>\n<p> \tShowrunner Katie Dippold, director Andrew DeYoung and cinematographer Christian Sprenger chose to center sound rather than lean into the usual visual tropes of a psychedelic experience when Tom drinks a shroom concoction called \u201ctrue sight\u201d to find answers about the supernatural force locals believe inhabits the fictional New England island town. That meant exaggerating noises like the creak of a chair and intensifying other sounds, such as a long drag on a cigarette, which \u201cadded a comedic effect,\u201d says rerecording mixer Larry Benjamin.<\/p>\n<p> \tAdds Yocum of the mystery that starts to unfold: \u201cAudio was the focus of our character\u2019s world-building to put us in the head of what he was experiencing, and it ends up going from a place of being sort of psychological distortion and eventually unraveling to a specific place that relates to his character arc and story-building.\u201d  \t<\/p>\n<p> \t<em>This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, <a href=\"https:\/\/subscribe.hollywoodreporter.com\/sub\/?p=THR&#038;f=saleb&#038;s=IH1402HR20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">click here to subscribe<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\">  \t \t\tTHR Newsletters \t \t<\/h2>\n<p>Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cloud.email.hollywoodreporter.com\/signup\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel>  \t<span> \t\tSubscribe\t<\/span>  \t\t\t<span>Sign Up<\/span> \t \t<\/a> \t<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the final moments of Widow\u2019s Bay\u2018s \u201cWhat to Expect on Your Trip\u201d episode, Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), high on mushrooms, is hurled over the toilet, hands clasped in prayer as a deep, haunting sound calls to him and images of his wife, then pregnant, flash in his mind. \u201cHe\u2019s doing this earnest plea to God [to protect his son] and then we get met with this subterranean, demonic spiritual voice that is representative of the voice of the island itself,\u201d explains supervising sound editor Matt Yocum, describing the voice, on which he and his team spent the most time in the series, as the \u201cbig bad of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1589,1590,2,85,335,2006],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards","category-emmy-awards","category-emmys-2026","category-hollywood","category-tv","category-tv-features","category-widow039s-bay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}