In an era when broadcast comedies rarely break out, Ghosts has bucked the trend. With its admittedly ludicrous premise, itself based on a British series of the same name, the CBS show explores what happens to Rose McIver’s Samantha once she gains the ability to see and speak to the generations of deceased personalities who inhabit the upstate New York manor where she lives. The stats, however, are quite serious. Averaging 8.3 million viewers since it premiered in October, Ghosts has earned a speedy second-season renewal, famous evangelists (see: Mark Hamill) and a spot on the 2022 PaleyFest lineup. Its sprawling cast, joined by showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, hit the stage April 6. But first, the Joes, as they’re affectionately called, spoke with THR about the unlikely hit.
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How are you juggling the need to tell relatable stories with your decidedly out-there premise — do you find yourselves pulling back when things get too ghost-y?
JOE PORT I think the British people made a smart decision early on by having the ghosts just look like normal people. They’re not floating. They’re not transparent. That makes it easier to hook into them. As far as the emotion, we just try to tell grounded stories. It’s a little nuts because they’re ghosts and she’s seeing ghosts. But to us, it’s easier to access big emotions on this show than any others we’ve worked on because life and death are at the surface of so many of our stories.
JOE WISEMAN Last year, when we realized there’d be a Halloween episode, we thought, “Oh, we’ve got to do something really big and fun for Halloween!” But all the pitches kind of bent the premise. We pumped the brakes because we didn’t want to bend the rules so much so early.
PORT But we like to do stuff that incorporates the premise. We don’t want to do just a normal episode that they’d do on another show. We always try to look at the ghost angle.
This is a huge ensemble — 10 series regulars. Do you find it difficult servicing them all?
PORT We never would’ve had eight ghosts had that not existed in the format we were adapting. WISEMAN It’s just an unusual amount of people to have on a network sitcom.
PORT Normally, there’s five or six people. But once we started talking about all the possibilities, Joe and I came up with, like, 25 different ghosts that could encapsulate American history the way we saw it. It became hard to narrow them down at that point.
WISEMAN The other challenge, besides servicing all the ghosts, is getting Jay [Utkarsh Ambudkar] involved — because he can’t see the ghosts. So bringing in outside people helps.
PORT Poor Utkarsh can talk to only one-tenth of the cast.
The benefit of so many people, I’d imagine, is the opportunity for varied scene pairings.
WISEMAN There are so many different combinations. That’s something that we’re just going to continue to play with — and to go back to the ones that clearly work. In the Flower [Sheila Carrasco]episode, we found Alberta [Danielle Pinnock] and Isaac [Brandon Scott Jones] are just a great team.
PORT Joe and I spent six months [on set] in Montreal last year and were around the actors, obviously, a lot. We saw that Rebecca [Wisocky] and Brandon were best friends in real life, so now that’s a dynamic that we want to explore.
Speaking of Montreal, what are the highs and lows of shooting up there?
WISEMAN The crew is wonderful. It’s just a great town. But after October, it gets very cold, and it’s hard to shoot outside — mainly because none of our ghosts can put any clothes on. We have a ghost with no pants. At some point, we simply can’t shoot outside.
Tell me about the development, because — and I say this with love — it is not a typical CBS comedy.
PORT Lionsgate and BBC had this property, and CBS took it off the table immediately. They got in touch with us because we had written a supernatural comedy for them five years earlier — this comedy, basically based on me and Joe and our never-ending partnership, about two vampires who’ve been married for 500 years. It was called Eternally Yours, and they did not want it. That’s the funny thing about this business: The longer you’re in it, things that seem like a closed door can lead to something way down the line. So we started watching the British series.
WISEMAN After the first five minutes, I was like, “I’m in. We have to do this.” It just immediately jumped out as original and fun.
PORT It’s very adaptable. They could do this in 30 countries. We get to really shine a light on American history. This version is wholly its own thing. We saw that immediately.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
This story first appeared in the March 30 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
