Get to Know the ‘Ghosts’ of Rose McIver’s New CBS Comedy (PHOTOS)
Fall Preview
Rose McIver (iZombie) is back working with the undead: In this feel-good comedy based on a British hit, she plays aggressively positive writer Samantha, who plans to turn the Victorian home she’s just inherited in New York’s Hudson Valley into a B&B with her more practical chef husband, Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar). But after a near-death experience, she develops the power to see dead people—and this house is full of them.
Once she gets over her initial shock and convinces Jay she hasn’t gone insane, Samantha “brings her fresh eyes to the ghosts’ intractable roommate issues that have been festering for hundreds of years,” explains Ghosts exec producer Joe Port.
Adds McIver, “For me, this show is about understanding the people you’re spending a lot of time with in close proximity, which seems very fitting after the past year.” Of course, Samantha will also take advantage of being able to talk with the ghosts when her husband can’t. They report things he does and doesn’t tell her: “It’s a power imbalance, which is going to be pretty fun,” McIver says.
Below, the actress, Port and fellow EP Joe Wiseman make the introductions.
Ghosts, Series Premiere, Thursday, October 7, 9/8c, CBS
This is an excerpt from TV Guide Magazine’s 2021 Fall Preview issue. For more inside scoop on the new fall TV season, pick up the issue, on newsstands now.
Hetty (Rebecca Wisocky)
This conservative wife of an 1800s robber baron is actually Samantha’s ancestor. “[Samantha’s] mother is no longer alive, so they’re going to develop a quasi mother-daughter relationship,” hints Port, “and also a little bit of a competitive relationship, because they both consider themselves the owner of the house.”
Sasappis (Román Zaragoza)
The ghosts often function as a “very humorous hodgepodge of a peanut gallery,” Wiseman says, and no one throws shade better than this Native American from the 1500s. “We call him a young spirit, old soul,” says McIver.
Alberta (Danielle Pinnock)
As a Prohibition-era lounge singer who, McIver notes, has “been involved in a little bootlegging,” Alberta’s gift in the afterlife is the ability to project her humming into the world of the living.
Pete (Richie Moriarty)
The 1980s scout troop leader may be perpetually stuck with an arrow through his neck, but that doesn’t hinder his upbeat attitude. He’ll ask Sam to “reach out to his still-living, now elderly wife so he can see her one more time,” Port says.
Trevor (Asher Grodman)
As the most recently deceased housemate (for now!), Trevor can get a little frustrated trying to relay the details of his party-filled, finance-bro life in the 1990s. Like all the ghosts, he can’t change from the clothes he died in—so he walks around in a suit, minus the pants. We look forward to the “Lost-style flashbacks” that Port says will reveal more of their pasts.
Flower (Sheila Carrasco)
This wild child led a very colorful life in the 1960s, which we’ll learn about in an episode “all about the hippies,” Wiseman promises. Fun fact: Carrasco fought to keep armpit hair for the part, McIver shares.
Thorfinn (Devan Chandler Long)
Lovable and gruff, the Viking often plays against type by being “very fastidious,” McIver says. When human remains discovered on the property turn out to be his, “He wants them to give him the Viking funeral that he never got,” Port teases.
Isaac (Brandon Scott Jones)
Behind the bluster of this Revolutionary soldier is a sweet guy, who, even centuries later, is still unaware he’s gay. “It was important to have a modern young couple juxtaposed with the ghosts and their antiquated, era-specific views,” Port says. “That’s part of the fun.”
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