SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers from “Ghostfellas,” the Season 4, Episode 13 of CBS’s “Ghosts.”
“Ghosts” star Rose McIver‘s first-ever TV directing gig had a bit of everything: A 1980s flashback. A Mafioso storyline. Ghostly mind games. And even a heist. “It was cool to have a twist and a genre bent to the episode,” said McIver, who directed the Season 4 episode “Ghostfellas,” which aired Thursday on CBS. “We were still making an episode of ‘Ghosts’ that has to be cohesive with the season, but it was fun to explore a little flavor in there and be able to play with the tropes.”
In “Ghostfellas,” Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) is looking to add a new arrabbiata sauce to his restaurant — and early 1980s ghost Pete (Richie Moriarty) comes to the rescue with a unique family recipe. It’s a hit, but it turns out to be from his ex-wife Carol’s (Caroline Aaron) family. Carol’s still-alive cousin, who has mob ties, discovers that Jay is serving the sauce — and starts making threats. It’s then that Pete finally learns that the travel agency he worked at before he died was actually a money-laundering front for organized crime.
Meanwhile, in the B story, Hetty (Rebecca Wisocky) is tired of sharing a room with chatty Flower (Sheila Carrasco. She and Trevor (Asher Grodman) use their alliance to try and power play a switch in the manor’s sleeping arrangements. “I liked that there was this sort of intimidation and looming kind of quality to people suspecting other people,” McIver said of depicting the gamesmanship between ghosts. “It wasn’t a textbook episode in that way.”
Rose McIver as Samantha, Utkarsh Ambudkar as Jay, Román Zaragoza as Sasappis, Richie Moriarty as Pete, and Caroline Aaron as Carol, “Ghosts” (Bertrand Calmeau/CBS)
CBS
McIver had been preparing for years to direct an episode of TV, having shadowed directors and even taking some directing and editing classes. “My aspirations to direct have always been kind of rooted in the social side of it, and the that the kind of amazing creative logistics and problem solving that has to happen on any given day on a set in order to make episodic television,” she said. “I have no delusions that I’m this auteur who’s going to make profound cinematic, independent films that are born out of my soul. I really like practical people skills. I like the managerial side of trying to get 180 people on any given day to be looking in the same direction and interested in creating the same thing. I love the sort of constructive chaos of a film set.”
In working with “Ghosts” showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman on which episode to direct, McIver said she was given a choice: One where the action takes place mostly outside the show’s normal Woodstone Manor (so that her character, Sam, is less involved and she could focus on directing) or one at the manor, which would require her to balance more acting with directing.
“I thought that, for a first episode of television, to work with my strengths — being I really know our environments,” she said. “I know how we shoot them. I’m very familiar with blocking and with exactly what blocking we haven’t used, but is within the realms of possibility. And I thought it worked my strengths better to film the episode, even though I would be present in far more of the scenes. That was asking me to work less from scratch, from blank slate, and work more from a very familiar map.”
McIver’s episode did get to briefly leave the premises: The 1980s shots were filmed in a real Montreal travel agency. “They had to find somewhere that we could shoot for half a day that was a close enough distance that we could relocate to the stages in the afternoon, that evoked the ’80s, that only needed minimal rebuild,” she said. “And Zoe, our production designer, and our incredible team in locations and everybody found this place. It’s like a relic. It’s a functioning travel agency that we literally used some pieces of set design from. Like on the windowsill, they still had all of the hourglasses with sand from different beaches all over the world.”
McIver said she also felt lucky that this was a heavy Pete episode: “Richie Moriarty, who plays Pete, is so so technical, too,” she said. “He’s incredibly funny. He’s an improviser. He’s impulsive and has great instincts, but he’s also one of the most nuanced and directable actors that I could have ever asked to work with. You can just nudge him the slightest amount in one direction, and he offers you something that, while similar, has a completely different flavor, and it’s just it makes him a real weapon. I feel really lucky, he was such a generous scene partner, and spent so much time talking to me and helping so that I could go into this experience feeling confident.”
McIver isn’t the only “Ghosts” castmember looking to direct: She said she has “really encouraged a lot of my costars and been so happy to see so many people taking initiative and shadowing. Some of them are really adamant they want to pursue directing. And I think that’s brilliant, and I’m so wholeheartedly supportive of it. But I think even just as an exercise, it’s good for any actor to do to just familiarize yourself with the elaborate processes that have had to take place in order for you to step on set and say your lines.”
Filming has now wrapped on Season 4 of “Ghosts” — but there’s plenty more to do. CBS announced Thursday that it had renewed the series for two more seasons.
McIver is promising a major season finale: “I’ll say, your guess is as good as mine, when the audience watches it, how on earth we’re going to go into Season 5, where that catapults things into,” she said — noting that the episode ends on a big note.
“The finale is always big,” she said. “For example, there’s a line in the script that says, ‘we see a who’s who of ghostdom.’ We have so many guest stars, and it’s very fun, but it’s herding cats! I think we’re all kind of gonna step outside and our ears will be ringing, and we’ll have to take a week or two to just come back to Earth.”
