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Summary
- Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with Ghosts star Rose McIver.
- During her second Ladies Night conversation with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, McIver breaks down her approach to channeling Betsy Sodaro's Nancy in the latest possession episode.
- She also teases her experience achieving a major career milestone -- directing her first episode of television.
I had to wait until December 19th, but I finally got my greatest belly laugh of 2024 courtesy of Ghosts. In "A Very Arondekar Christmas Part 1,” while attempting to fix the water heater, Sam and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) suffer a shock, sparking another possession. Pete (Richie Moriarty) possesses Jay while Rose McIver’s Sam, a certified people-pleaser with a big heart who’s often quite concerned about what others think of her, is possessed by Betsy Sodaro’s Nancy, the super brash Cholera ghost who marches to the beat of her own drum to the fullest. Not only is the idea genius, but McIver and Sodaro’s execution of the concept is brilliant.
In celebration of the release of the double dose of Christmas special episodes, McIver returned to Collider Ladies Night to look back on some pivotal moments of her career, like working with her acting coaching and moving to Hollywood, and to dig into two unforgettable aspects of these new episodes — McIver channeling Sodaro’s one-of-a-kind work as Nancy, and Jay finally being able to see the ghosts.
How to Act Like Betsy Sodaro
“There's nobody I'd be more excited to try and imitate.”
Image via CBS
McIver actually might have willed this particular possession into existence. “I realized that last year, I did a few interviews where people were like, ‘What do you want for upcoming in the season?’ I was like, ‘I want to work with Betsy more!’” Wish, granted.
“I love Betsy so much. I think she's, as I've already ranted to you, great. I had mentioned that, and then I heard some rumor that there was another Christmas episode and there could be a possession element. Then the first real thing I heard was a text from one of the Joes, our showrunners, saying, ‘Could you do a Nancy impression?’ And I was like, ‘I have no idea. She's so iconic to us, but I'd love to swing the bat.’ I mean, there's nobody I'd be more excited to try and imitate. Then, thankfully, Betsy was just Betsy about it all and helped me every step of the way to try to do something in her ballpark.”
Part of Sodaro’s generosity included creating a video for McIver that’d show her how she’d deliver all of the lines and help her find a way to tackle them that’d best suit her as an actor. McIver explained:
“Betsy sent me a video of her in her apartment saying all of the lines, and she showed a couple of different options of the way that she would play the line where I'm complimenting Champa. I think it's like, ‘You're a fine-ass old lady.’ She did some physicality with it, and then she did some that wasn't and it was just sitting back, and she gave me options. Then I was able to try the physicality on, and if that worked for me and it felt like her, great, and if not, then I would drop it away. She just gave me, for the Miranda of it all, as a magpie, to be able to just go in and steal the bits that were useful and ignore the pieces that weren’t, because there’s parts of her that I wasn't able to channel at all, but you don't focus on those. You focus on, ‘Great, here are six things I can do that I can hang my version of Nancy on.’”
Image via CBS
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Two particular things that proved key to turning Sam into Nancy were Nancy’s distinctive voice and also her one-of-a-kind open-mouth gape.
“She has such a great, distinctive voice. [Betsy] works in the voiceover world all the time, understandably. So, the voice was the one that I knew, ‘Okay, that's where a good amount of time needs to be spent.’ And then I think the last thing was the open-mouth gape that she does, which I'm wary to even attempt right now. When she's focusing, as Nancy, she does this chin-forward, mouth-open particular detail, and I kind of found that at some point towards the end, and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that's so Nancy!’”
McIver’s performance as Sam being possessed by Nancy is undeniably one of the greatest laugh-out-loud moments of the entire series, but, in true Ghosts fashion, it’s good fun with a poignant tinge of heart.
“If I really unpack it, it's like, well, Sam's compromised on family dynamics and wanting so badly to be part of something nuclear that felt sort of wholesome and Christmasy. I think her getting in her own way all the time, and this liberation of just letting all of that go, and knowing that she's worth being loved just for being rather than having to do all of these things to please someone, I think that's really touching. It's stripping away all of the extras and knowing that she's valuable just because she is.”
Jay Seeing the Ghosts is a “Momentous and Pivotal” Moment for the Show
“I hope he lords that over her in an argument down the line that he does know them better in some ways.”
Image via CBS
Possession storylines are always quite fun on Ghosts, but this particular one changes the game big time with an ingenious wrinkle — one that gave fans, and Utkarsh Ambudkar, something they’ve been hoping for throughout the show’s run. Soon after being possessed by Pete, the group attempts to give Jay an exorcism. The problem is, that exorcism expels Jay, not Pete, and that means not only can Jay finally see the ghosts, but he can also interact with them physically as well.
“Sam's husband has been just believing her, supporting her, trying to build relationships with people he can't see but who have become, in a weird way, his family. To actually have this tangible, in-person — and it is tangible, he can touch them. I've said this, Jay is able to physically interact with the ghosts, which is something that Sam has never been able to do, and I love that. I hope he lords that over her in an argument down the line that he does know them better in some ways.”
It really is an inspired way to tick this long-awaited storytelling box. You give viewers the opportunity to see Jay finally meet the ghosts but it’s done in a way that, one, is reversible and doesn’t upend the show entirely moving forward and, two, is unique from how Sam interacts with the ghosts, putting a surprising and thoughtful spin on his experience.
Even better, it’s a downright brilliant concept on paper that soars in the finished product, largely thanks to Ambudkar and director Richie Keene’s ability to pivot the typical filming process and keep track of three different versions of Jay.
“Utkarsh has been having to operate in a two-hander for the last four years, and I'm in an ensemble. He does a very good job, and it's really hard. Acting is reacting, and you're playing off the people around you, so it was actually very momentous for him to be able to interact with more than one actor in the scene. I think he had a really good experience with that.”
McIver continued:
"It's a very momentous and pivotal episode for the series because it really means, going forward, there's just that degree more understanding between them and a shared experience in lots of ways. I think it's very special to see Utkarsh navigating those three versions of Jay, and all the ghosts. And Richie Keen, who directed it, just was doing god's work trying to get through the technicalities of filming that, too. It was really complicated. He was fantastic.”
How the ‘Ghosts’ Team Chose the Perfect Episode for McIver to Direct
McIver takes a cue from Keen this season because Ghosts Season 4 will mark the very first time she’s directing an episode of television. While we’ll have to wait a little longer to see the episode, the 13th of the season, the episode is in the can and McIver was able to offer a little insight into her experience making it, like how the team went about selecting the perfect episode for her to helm.
“A lot of it is about trying to line things up with the schedule and production and our showrunners and what is written at the right time. They asked me a couple of questions about whether I would rather it was something that occurred in the house and was more of a flashback episode that takes us elsewhere, or was more one in a familiar setting. For the purposes of, ‘This is my first episode of television,’ I think in our environment. I feel like I know this environment like the back of my hand. I feel very confident in the staging and the blocking, and the characters that we’ll be working with. It's a guarantee that I'm working with our ensemble as our actors, so that seemed to make sense.”
One particular story element that helped McIver behind the lens was the fact that this particularly episode is “not a heavily Sam-focused episode.” She continued:
“I feel like I had come off the back of the Christmas episodes and some other episodes in the season that have kind of unearthed a lot of stuff for Sam that has helped me unpack. So, it wasn't so much that. It was much more of a logistical feat just trying to figure out how not to slow the day down at all but be able to visually see framing. We worked with Sam. My stand-in’s name is also Sam, which is perfect. She was wonderful and she would stand in for me for non-camera rehearsals so that I could kind of work through things, and then I would drop in. But in the scene directing, it was very interesting to try and stay present and reactive and also be making a mental checklist the whole time of, ‘Did I get that line? Did I get it? No, I need that one again. How was the framing there?’ Whatever the questions may be that were popping up, and then you're trying to sort of swallow them enough that you can still be present in the scene. It got easier the more I did it.”
McIver also made a point to acknowledge something that came up quite a few times during our Collider Ladies Night conversation, the importance of having a supportive team around you.
“I've been really wanting to direct for a very long time, and I had the most positive experience I could have asked for. It was so wonderful. I was so supported. We have an amazing crew in Montreal. It feels a little like New Zealand sometimes, the kind of collaborative nature of things and everybody helping each other out, so I was very much carried by our amazing crew.”
Eager to hear even more about McIver’s journey as an actor and her time working on Ghosts? Be sure to check out our full hourlong conversation in the video at the top of this article, or you can listen to the interview in podcast form below:
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When a cash-strapped couple inherits a crumbling country estate, they soon discover it is inhabited by an eclectic group of spirits, leading to comedic encounters as they navigate cohabitation with their supernatural roommates.
Seasons 4
Network CBS
Ghosts is available to stream on Paramount+.
English (US) ·