Ghosts is hands down one of the most delightful new shows. It’s got an A+ behind-the-scenes team led by showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, but there’s one particular standout quality of the series that just plain old doesn’t work without spot-on casting. It’s the show's ability to switch from deeply emotional moments to laugh-out-loud one-liners on a dime.
Just in case you’ve yet to jump into this joy of a show, Ghosts on CBS is an adaptation of the British series of the same name. Rose McIver leads as Sam, a woman who moves into a home she inherits with her husband Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar). One day, she falls down the stairs and when she comes to, she realizes she can see the ghosts of people who have died on the property. Those ghosts include Asher Grodman’s Trevor, a Wall Street bro who died in 2000, Danielle Pinnock’s Alberta, a Prohibition-era jazz singer, Brandon Scott Jones’ Isaac, an American Revolutionary officer, and Rebecca Wisocky’s Hetty who’s actually one of Sam’s ancestors.
With Ghosts set to return for a second season on September 29th, the entire cast came to San Diego Comic-Con to celebrate, and while there, they took a moment to swing by the Collider interview studio for a chat about their experience making Season 1 and to tease what’s to come in Season 2.
The first of two interviews includes McIver, Wisocky, Pinnock, Jones, and Grodman, and spends a good deal of time digging into how exactly they’re able to excel with comedy and emotion simultaneously. One of the first scenes we touched on is one of the most unforgettable moments of the entire first season; it’s when Sam commits to maintaining her connection with the ghost rather than risk breaking it to lift the curse that could be stopping them from turning the house into a successful B&B. McIver began by teasing how we might see that moment reverberate through the characters’ relationships in Season 2:
“There’s a deepening that has happened between the connections of everybody — between the ghosts within themselves and also the ghosts and the livings, and even Jay to the ghosts. I often say this; even though he doesn’t communicate with them directly, he understands them a lot better than Sam does some of the time. He’s more inclined to believe things. He’s more open-minded in a lot of ways. So I feel like the depth, and we’ve all professed love to each other now, that’s a pretty major way to go — [to Jones] you’ve professed a lot of love, actually. You and [Nigel]. So there’s a lot this season we kind of get to unpack further and further.”
Again, Ghost does jump from the sweet and sensitive to hilarious antics often, but this particular scene does feel like a masterclass in successfully making those leaps. Jones offered a little insight into how they accomplish that by highlighting some priorities when tackling such scenes:
“I think that there’s an instinct to not want to make it too saccharine, right? So you want to undercut it. A lot of times we’ll just sort of do coverage and you’ve just gotta hit that one line and it’s our editors that do such a great job of being able to find that balance of tone. But at the same time as a performer, I think we do try to get together a lot of times in those big group scenes and understand what’s the fun thing we want to play with and then also, at the same time, try to find that rhythm or that musicality, Rebecca’s favorite word, in order to make sure that those beats are hit. Because yeah, I think the death of the show is when it gets too saccharine and you don’t want any moments like that.”
If you’re looking for the secret sauce to nailing tonal shifts mid-scene, it was Wisocky who might have revealed it:
“I feel like my company all has impeccable taste, so if it feels like we’re delighting one another, I think we feel like we’re on to something good.”
Wisocky went on to highlight the value of an ideal scene partner when discussing another personal favorite scene of Season 1 that happens in Episode 10, “Possession.” It’s when Jay’s left Hetty’s body and Hetty feels compelled to tell Sam, “Don’t live your life with regrets, Samantha.” Here’s what Wisocky had to say about finding the ideal tone for that especially powerful line of dialogue:
“It’s nice when there’s that, and the show I think does it so beautifully, there was that juxtaposition. I think I talk about how glorious gummy bears were just moments before and then only in looking at Rose does Hetty discover in that moment, ‘You have a chance to go to Paris,’ or whatever going to Paris means to you. Don’t let it slip by. And it happened in that moment. Again, we all truly do have this wonderful partnership together on screen and such lovely give and take, and so the only work I really had to do in that moment is to look at my scene partner and to look at Rose and to look at my character’s descendent. The playing of that scene felt like it had to just be that way. And to have it be bookended by, then I think I say some ridiculous line about, ‘And also, PS and not for nothing, very, very nice of you not to try fornicating with me.’ We add levity all the time and I think that’s what makes it work.”
As for Grodman’s Trevor, we do get some opportunities to see the kind of guy he really is earlier on in the season, but it isn’t until Episode 16, “Trevor’s Pants,” that we really get a sense of who he is and what he stands for. Trevor may seem to fit in perfectly with his Wall Street co-workers, but we eventually come to learn that he’s willing to step up when necessary. What is it that makes Trevor the kind of guy who’s willing to break the Bro Code when the others won’t? Grodman revisited having that exact conversation with Port and Wiseman:
“We move fast, right? We had like five days to figure out, what is the dynamic of Trevor with his friends that he lived with, that bro group. And I remember having a discussion with the Joes saying, ‘Okay, so is it that he is a member of this group but there’s a side of him that’s beyond them, or is it that he’s a member of the group who just never belonged?’ And it was the former, that he’s in there but he’s also not in there and I think there’s a relationship with having a younger brother in the Pinkus relationship that then gets flipped with the ghosts because, in many ways, Trevor is the younger brother with the ghosts, and I think there’s something in that dynamic of kind of taking care of the little guy that pulled him in, but not enough for him to completely abandon the bros or the secret and the lies and stuff like that, but enough to say, ‘I can do both,’ that he can take care of this guy and keep a foot in with the group.”
And finally, Pinnock is an electric force as Albert in this series. She consistently ups the energy and lights up the room whenever Alberta is on screen. But, Pinnock insists she also has a vulnerable side and teased that that’s something we might get the chance to see via the evolution of Alberta’s relationship with Pete:
“First of all, I’ve never been a romantic interest to anybody on TV, so this is just so delicious to be able to play with Richie Moriarty who is an incredible Pete. I would also say, Alberta’s a delicious dive from the 1920s and she’s ruckus and she’s a truth teller and drinks a lot of Sazeracs, but also we haven’t seen her beautiful side of her vulnerability and I’m excited to explore that for Season 2 and a love triangle that may happen between her, Nancy the cholera ghost and Pete! They literally are Brandy and Monica, 'The Boy Is Mine,' they’re fighting for their man and that’s okay. And Alberta’s gonna win!”
Eager to hear more from the group on what’s to come in Ghosts Season 2? You’re going to want to check out our full conversation in the video at the top of this article! And stay tuned; we’ll have another Ghosts interview with Utkarsh Ambudkar, Richie Moriarty, Sheila Carrasco, Román Zaragoza, and Devan Chandler Long for you soon.