The warm comedy “Ghosts” has been a hit for CBS, despite facing an at-times claustrophobic feeling over the years, perhaps spawned in part by being a show launched during the pandemic. Star Rose McIver, who plays Sam, broke down Season 4’s premiere for TheWrap and teased how this season opens up multiple new pathways for the show to explore and for new characters to enter its orbit.
The premiere of Patience
That first new pathway comes with the debut of new ghost, Patience, played by comedic actress Mary Holland (“Nightbitch”), in Thursday night’s premiere titled after her character. McIver praised Holland’s season-opening arc playing the traumatized Puritan ghost — but shared that the character had initially left her apprehensive due to an existing “Ghosts” prude.
“I had been a little concerned with potential overlap with her and Hetty as characters, Patience and Hetty being the sort of rule setters of the house,” McIver explained. “But it was incredible to see, when they’re next to each other in the episode, how vastly different their characters are, and how progressive Hetty has become in her own funny way.”
As we saw with the end of the premiere, Patience is set to stick around for a beat — and seems likely to continue to pop up even beyond her initial arc.
“I think we all know Mary is awesome to have around. So I’m sure she’ll be back plenty,” McIver said.
Holland brings experience as a prolific Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre performer. McIver said that she started taking UCB classes herself while working on “Ghosts.”
“She’s able to make a character that could be so finite and at risk of really being dull or being the buzzkill of the party,” McIver shared. “It’s sinister energy, but she’s so energetic and so thoughtful and plays things so many different ways. I mean, in the true improv sense, she really is in the moment.”
Expanding the show
But Patience isn’t the only new character set to help open up the show’s world. Next week’s episode brings the debut of another new character to “Ghosts”: Sam’s dad, played by Dean Norris (“Breaking Bad”).
“It’s notable that we haven’t met him for three full seasons,” McIver noted. “We’ve had multiple Christmases, and there’s never really been mention of him. And so the stakes are very high when he appears,” McIver explained.
“They’re able to kind of reconnect in a way, and that they hadn’t for so long,” McIver shared. “The tough guy exterior with a sensitive heart inside is just always very fascinating to me, and I think he plays that better than we could have ever hoped for.”
That lets McIver play something new as well.
“It gives us a little bit of insight into Sam’s longing to fit in and to have a family, and a fear of abandonment, which is quite nicely paralleled with some of Patience’s fear [and] experience of abandonment,” McIver added of the ghost’s background, left stranded in the dirt underneath the mansion for centuries. “We start to understand how our characters’ history has informed exactly where they are now in a special way this year. And that episode, for me, was obviously very helpful for understanding Sam.”
The show is set to continue expanding this year as Sam’s partner Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) opens the bed and breakfast’s new restaurant, offering another way for new characters to come into the series.
“Anything that opens up the universe is very helpful for us,” McIver shared. “Obviously, we’re in a house a lot of the time. There’s the same characters inside a house. And to have this restaurant is just kind of an injection of fresh blood coming in.”
Jay will be teaming with the show’s recurring contractor Mark (Tristan D. Lalla) to run the restaurant, also giving Jay a new playground.
“That’s really awesome for Utkash to get to play such a distinctly his storyline. And, I mean, they haven’t shown themselves to be flawless business people yet with the B and B, and I think you can kind of anticipate, certainly, things don’t go smoothly on the restaurant front either,” McIver said.
She compared the coming dynamic to that of classic farce “Fawlty Towers.”
“‘Fawlty Towers’ moments, struggling to manage the hotel with 12 people who are expecting customer service — that works well for me,” McIver said.
Rolling with a tumultuous four years
The season premiere of “Ghosts” comes following a strike-shortened third season, as well as McIver having her first child in between seasons. The star, along with the rest of the cast, has had to get used to a tumultuous run ever since launching as the Covid pandemic began.
“I mean, this show, we did our pilot table read on March 13, [2020,] like the day the world shut down, and it’s been sort of ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ to get here,” McIver quipped. The show finally premiered in the fall of 2021. “We moved [shooting] locations, from L.A. to Montreal. We survived a strike, we survived a pandemic. We survived multiple characters, actors on the show having babies. It’s been this very wild ride.”
The New Zealand-born actress reflected on how being a new mom has informed the way she plays Sam.
“Being a mum, a new mum, definitely gives you a different perspective on things,” McIver said. “It’s quite interesting that it’s sort of paralleled in Sam having to learn that she can’t be pleasing everybody all the time, and she can’t accommodate everyone all the time.”
McIver said that she’s been feeling spread thin in her real life, while also acknowledging that she’s in a fortunate position.
“It tempers your eagerness to give yourself up in order to be what other people want you to be,” McIver said. “And I feel like it’s given Sam a bit more depth for me and a bit more to sort of chew on, that that feels very personally resonant with trying to navigate all sorts of different worlds at once.”
A witchy Halloween episode
McIver shared her excitement for the forthcoming Halloween episode, the third episode of this season, which she previewed includes Patience leading the house in accusing Sam of being a witch.
Holiday episodes “bring out such a strong viewpoint from all the different characters,” McIver said. “They always obviously deal with family a lot, specifically in the Christmas episode, but just what it evokes of the child within the character is really interesting. And obviously, in a Halloween episode, irrational or rational fears come into play.”
“The sense that Sam is believed to be a witch, and everybody has a very different take on whether that’s possible or not, whether that matters or not,” McIver teased. “It’s just a perfect little fly in the ointment for the ghosts to navigate this this year.”
Being the lead in an ensemble
The actress’s role has evolved over the years as McIver has worked to give the ghosts a spotlight.
“Early on for Sam, when you’re navigating 10 characters on a show, she’s a facilitator. In most ways, she’s conveying other people’s stories. She’s an engine pushing things,” McIver said. “Until recently, a lot of it has been trying to get out of the way.”
She shared her desire to make the whole ensemble shine, even though she’s the lead.
“It’s interesting being the lead of a show where, really, I feel like I’m trying not to take up too much air time,” McIver said. “You know, the show is called ‘Ghosts,’ and it was about me trying to illuminate aspects of their lives.”
Beginning in Season 3 and into Season 4, though, McIver said that she feels she’s getting the chance to find how to create humor with Sam herself.
“There’s a lot in Sam’s desire to be liked and to seek approval that, to me, is the heart of what’s funny about her, and endearing, and infuriating,” McIver said. “It’s been really kind of a treat this year as we’ve had more time and we do these breakaway storylines to indulge Sam as Sam, not Sam as who she is to the rest of the family.”
McIver said that she has a better understanding of the character now and that we’ll see multiple sides of her this season, including continuing her work as a writer. She also pointed to “strange alliances” beginning to happen between certain characters as something to watch out for.
A musical episode?
McIver and her castmates have expressed their interest in doing a musical episode before. While we have yet to see one come to fruition, the desire for one remains, McIver said.
“The sense of performance within performance is really fun,” McIver said. “I think there’s so much to mine from it. And so that element, for me, of a musical would be wonderful, to see who people project and who people believe themselves to be and want themselves to be.”
That’s a theme that McIver said happens throughout Season 4. “There’s a lot of facade. And a lot of people impersonating people.”
That includes new ghosts visiting the show, McIver teased. They’ll also have an ally in dealing with some of the dilemmas that their secret ghosts provide for them with Jay’s sister returning to the show, already knowing what’s going on, McIver noted.
Getting deep
The show has tackled surprisingly deep topics at times, but McIver emphasized that they know it’s all about the jokes.
“People aren’t tuning in for a TED Talk. They’re not coming to hear a lecture on the state of the world and the human condition,” McIver said, “they’re coming for a comedy. So whatever we do has to be palatable and have a certain amount of levity and escapism, for the end of people’s long days at work.”
The subject matter of “Ghosts” could feel darker, but McIver pointed to the natural pairing of comedy and tragedy as helping the show avoid that, as well as inspiring fans to wrestle with bigger issues.
“It’s been quite interesting actually meeting people at conventions and things, and hearing the way some of the personal stories have really touched them, and people being able to have conversations about the afterlife in a way that they hadn’t, or of mortality,” McIver shared.
What makes exploring dark topics work for the show, McIver said, is to offer the conversation “but without finite answers.” She added, “We’re not trying to be moral police or to tell everybody, ‘this is how it works.’”
Facing a changing industry and what comes next
Through all of the show’s growth, McIver expressed her thanks for both working on “Ghosts” and being able to maintain a career across different TV shows, including her run as the lead of “iZombie.”
“At a certain point, I feel like it’s just dumb luck,” McIver said. “I’ve been incredibly lucky to be signed on shows with great creators who have ideas that have longevity.”
She also recognized that this is even more the case as the entertainment industry goes through some historic shifts.
“We’re all so insanely appreciative for the jobs we have,” McIver said. “Especially in this crazy climate, to be on something that not only keeps going and that is fun, but is evolving.”
She expressed her excitement about the way a show continuing lets you keep getting deeper — though she concedes that it’s a bell curve, and you might run into some issues if you went “40 seasons or something.”
“The texture that you’re able to get when fans and cast and crew alike all know who these people are, a little bit, and start to anticipate decisions and be surprised when they’re not exactly what they expect — it just gives a whole new life to something,” McIver said. “Season to season, it’s growing more and more, and it doesn’t feel tired at all. If anything, it feels like it’s really waking up for me. This season, we get to explore less just characters’ backstories, and more of the dynamics between them and how their histories have informed their current decisions.”
“Ghosts” airs Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and streams the next day on Paramount+.
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