Rebecca Wisocky could give queens lessons on imperiousness. The elegant redhead plays Hetty, part of the ensemble cast haunting an estate on CBS' freshman hit Ghosts. It's not just that her character is to the manor born; she is to the manor made. Her robber baron husband, who oozed toxic privilege, built the stone manse.
In a Zoom exclusive with MediaVillage, Wisocky laughed about inhabiting that sort of superior character. She was also rather haughty as Evelyn Powell in Lifetime's Devious Maids. Evelyn's snobbishness was more to mask insecurities; she was fearful that her wealth would vanish. Hetty, however, is quite positive, thank you, that she is entitled to all in her domain and that she is right. Indeed, she is alwaysright.
Wisocky giggled at how she has nailed this specialty. It's not all she plays by a longshot. Over the last couple of years, she has been in Dopesick, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Why Women Kill, United States of Al and Star Wars: Squadrons.
"I'm just like a wacky kid from south-central Pennsylvania," Wisocky said. "But for some reason, I have this inner persnickety, fancy lady in me that I love channeling so, so, so, so much! I find it heartbreaking to play someone so brittle and someone so hypocritical. I just find it to be heartbreaking and funny, which in my mind is where that all the juicy stuff is."
Hetty, stuck in a neverland with other ghosts where spirits wait to be "sucked off" to their eternal resting place, combines both. Over the season viewers have learned that she was in an unhappy marriage and is racist, particularly toward the Irish (very much in keeping with her time and position).
As the plot cycles through the large ensemble, focusing on each ghost's backstory, more is shared, such as in this recent exchange about feminism with Flower (Sheila Carrasco), the tripped-out hippie mauled to death after trying to hug a bear.
"I spent far too long forgiving the sins of men in my lifetime," Hetty says. "I see no reason why we have to put up with it in the afterlife."
"Are you a feminist now?" Flower asks.
"As long as it doesn't support women handling money or riding bicycles, yes, I think I am a feminist," Hetty says, a smile of pride crossing her face.
The cast with a Viking, a jazz singer, a Wall Street frat bro, a Boy Scout leader, a Native American and a Revolutionary soldier haunt the house where so far only Sam (Rose McIver) can see them because of conking her head in the pilot. Just that beginning sounds like a corny comedy that would never make it in the age of streaming and edgier fare. And yet this American version of a British series is CBS' breakout comedy hit, already renewed for next season.
Wisocky acknowledged no one knew it would catch on the way it has.
"Well, you never know how things are going to strike with a national audience," she said. "We all knew that it was an amazing script, an amazing concept. I went and binged the entirety of the BBC version that is such a tight troupe of comedy actors. They have been working together for many, many years. I knew that the challenge would be to create the kind of chemistry that is necessary to do an old-school ensemble comedy in a claustrophobic setting. And, we really lucked out; everyone in our cast is like-minded. Most of them come from the theater, and they know what it means to keep the ball in the air."
The cast bonded while shooting outside of Montreal. It seems like a mandatory mantra every cast says about how they became family on set. Yet, this one grew close shooting during a pandemic, far from home. They played many board games, including a Romanian version of Clue that McIver brought.
McIver "made us fantasize about having the ghosts, watching Clue or us re-enacting it or having some sort of dinner theater murder mystery tour in the house," Wisocky recalled. "So that's another example of how we really do relate -- to a nauseating degree."
After they wrapped for the season, they continued playing games, and Wisocky was working on upping her Scrabble game. But Danielle Pinnock, who plays Alberta the jazz singer, "decided that it was that for the health of the family, we all had to delete the Scrabble app," she recalled. "It got very competitive."
The project Wisocky planned to do during hiatus had fallen through, another casualty of COVID. She was working on improvements to her Los Angeles home she shares with her husband, lighting designer Lap Chi Chu, and three rescue dogs.
Having worked steadily for so long, Wisocky is still grateful to be on a hit. "There's so much television, there's so much streaming television that's so good, and that's so binge-able, that I think the attention span has collectively shortened," she mused. "So, people don't necessarily want to wait until the next week to watch something. And they don't necessarily have a water cooler that they can gather around anymore, right? So, I'm not sure what it is.
"There's something that seems to appeal to families," she continued. "Families are watching it together. The audience wants an old-school sitcom, and just easy, good belly laughs."
She'll keep getting laced into that corset and haunting this house "as long as the writers can keep on coming up with amazing storylines," Wisocky concluded. "It sure seems like the model is there for this universe to expand and remain authentic to its original premise. I would be delighted to do this job for many years to come."
Ghosts is telecast Thursdays at 9 p.m. on CBS.
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