Ghosts Brings Spirited Comedy to Global

Rose McIver and cast mine a New York mansion’s haunted past for laughs

After several years playing a member of the undead, Rose McIver now has poltergeists to deal with.

The former iZombie star injected humour into that role, but more overt laughs rule as the CBS comedy Ghosts gets a Halloween-month premiere this Thursday. In the adaptation of a popular BBC series, McIver and Utkarsh Ambudkar (The Broken Hearts Gallery) play heirs to a mansion in New York’s Hudson Valley, where the spirits of previous residents still inhabit the joint.

Samantha (McIver) can see them but others can’t, complicating the couple’s efforts to turn the site into a bed and breakfast… and their daily lives in general.

“I’m starting to wonder if I’m ever going to get a regular job not playing somebody at least half-dead again,” New Zealand-native McIver muses. “I guess I found my niche. [In Ghosts], it’s hopefully grounded and is this species that we can all relate to. One of the things I get most excited about—and I was so fortunate with iZombie to have—is to see people dressing up and getting lost in another world. I think so me of the fans of this kind of theme are the most dedicated, creative, [imaginative] people out there, and I feel really lucky that this world would take me back again.”

Among those playing the diverse array of ghosts—representing different eras and lifestyles, from a Viking to a hippie—are Sheila Carrasco, Asher Grodman, Brandon Scott Jones, Devan Chandler Long, Richie Moriarty, Danielle Pinnock, Rebecca Wisocky and Román Zaragoza.

Co-star Ambudkar reasons that Ghosts is a different kind of effort for its network: “I think it’s a new energy and something that CBS hasn’t really had, for them to take a big swing with a comedy like this, which is supernatural. It’s a little edgy at times. It’s certainly as diverse as any other show, and they’ve been super-open to our input… myself, Roman, Danielle, Sheila, and what we have to say about our characters. I think it’s going to be really, really fresh for people to see this on CBS.”

Ghosts is being filmed in Montreal, but Joe Wiseman—one of its executive producers, along with his longtime creative partner Joe Port—explains, “We liked Upstate New York [as a setting]. It seemed to be sort of rich in American history. We wanted a Viking character, so we did some research. They were in Canada, but there is evidence and actually journals that we found of them describing coming down the coast. They would go inland and explore. As soon as we figured that out, we were like, ‘OK. We may as well set it here. That seems like a fun character to have running around.’ ”

Ghosts airs Thursdays at 9:01 p.m. on Global & CBS