Tatiana Maslany Isn’t In ‘Widow’s Bay,’ Stephen King’s Viral Post Just Made The Internet Think Otherwise
Tatiana Maslany is in the middle of one of the busiest stretches of her career, and her name has been everywhere on entertainment social media this week. Apple TV has been riding a similar wave, with two genre series capturing attention at the same time. One of them is ‘Widow’s Bay’, the horror comedy that has become one of the best new shows of 2026.
‘Widow’s Bay’ follows Mayor Tom Loftis, played by Matthew Rhys, as he tries to revive a struggling island town while the locals insist the place is afflicted by a centuries-old curse. The series premiered on April 29, 2026, and built so much momentum that Apple TV renewed it for a second season on June 11, just days before the first season finale. Reviews have been just as strong, with the show landing a 97 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and it even pulled in praise from horror master Stephen King himself.
That King endorsement is exactly where the confusion started. On June 17, King took to X to praise both ‘Widow’s Bay’ and another Apple TV series in the very same post, calling the second show like Hitchcock came back to do it one more time, then immediately turning his attention to Maslany, raving about how her face shifts from comedy to terror in an instant. Because King mentioned ‘Widow’s Bay’ first and pivoted directly into raving about Maslany by name, plenty of readers assumed she had a role on that exact show.
The mix up makes sense given the timing, since both series are currently airing on Apple TV at the same time. But Maslany does not appear anywhere in the ‘Widow’s Bay’ cast list, which is led by Rhys alongside Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root, Kingston Rumi Southwick, Kevin Carroll and Dale Dickey.
The show King was actually raving about is ‘Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’, the darkly comedic thriller where Maslany plays Paula, a newly divorced mom who falls into a dangerous rabbit hole of blackmail, murder and youth soccer after witnessing a crime. Created by David J. Rosen and directed by David Gordon Green, the series premiered on May 20, 2026, with new episodes airing weekly through July 15. It costars Jake Johnson, Brandon Flynn and Murray Bartlett, and has been a critical hit in its own right, sitting at an impressive 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Maslany’s casting carries plenty of weight on its own. She won a Primetime Emmy Award in 2016 for playing multiple characters on ‘Orphan Black’, becoming the first Canadian to win an Emmy in a major dramatic category for acting in a Canadian series. That history is part of why a King cosign, even one meant for a different show, was enough to send her name trending.
With two acclaimed Apple TV shows airing back to back and a horror legend cheering from the sidelines, it is easy to see how the wires got crossed. Now that the record is straight, would you want to see Maslany actually step into the cursed world of ‘Widow’s Bay’ down the line, or does she belong squarely in the chaos of ‘Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed’?
