GHOSTS Post-Mortem: Rose McIver on Directing ‘Ghostsfellas’ Flashbacks, Group Dynamics, and More

February 20, 2025 by Marisa Roffman

“Ghostsfellas” – Jay angers a local restaurateur when he uses a recipe at his restaurant that was given to him by Pete, on the CBS Original series GHOSTS, Thursday, Feb. 20 (8:31-9:01 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs)*. Series star Rose McIver directed the episode. Pictured (L-R): Director Rose McIver and Caroline Aaron as Carol. Photo: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS ©2024 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Thursday, February 20 episode of GHOSTS.]

GHOSTS’ Pete (Richie Moriarty) learned his job as a travel agent was a lie on the Thursday, February 20 episode of the CBS comedy.

After Pete gave a secret sauce recipe to Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) to help with Jay’s new restaurant, he got terrifying feedback: A claim it was a stolen family recipe. And it quickly became clear they had to take the situation seriously—the man was a cousin of Pete’s wife, Carol (Caroline Aaron)…and Carol informed the other ghosts (and Rose McIver’s Sam) that her family was actually a part of the mob. (Pete was the only person at the travel agency actually doing travel agency work; the rest was a front.)

But with both Carol and Pete dead (and no way to explain to her family what happened without sounding unwell), their backs were up against the wall. At first, Jay gave in to her family’s demands. But seeing the toll it was taking on his friend, Pete stood up for Sam and Jay and got Carol to help out: Carol was actually a mob accountant and she had blackmail material that could be leveraged; the family then backed off of Jay.

For McIver, who directed the episode, “Richie is kind of a director’s dream,” she tells Give Me My Remote. “He’s so deft and he’s so flexible, and he has incredible instincts that he’ll bring. You can ask to nudge him in the tiniest way, in either direction, and he finds whole new things. He knows how to service beats emotionally. He knows, when you do have to provide options because something may be being resolved in the edit, how to do so in a way that is still congruent with the rest of the scene. I am so lucky to have had an episode that had so much Richie Moriarty in it.”

“You feel a little like an audio engineer at some point, turning knobs and sort of seeing, well, what will happen if there’s a little more regret in Pete here?” she continues. “Just the sensitivity with which he responds to notes is really remarkable. I’m so grateful.”

The scenes in the restaurant featured a lot of moving pieces, including extras and guest stars who aren’t a regular part of the ensemble. But that wasn’t even the most complex element of directing those scenes.

“Well, you’ve got to remember that up here, when you shoot in Montreal, so much of our cast and crew are French-speaking,” McIver points out. “I’ve tried [to learn] for the last four years; each year, I improve a little bit in my French. And I certainly think my French improved drastically faster the week that I was directing, because you’re wanting to understand a lot of the conversations that are happening between background, between assistant directors talking and instructing other people how to do jobs [that] as a cast member, normally, I don’t have to be privy to.”

“The language, I wouldn’t even call it a challenge in a negative way—it was one of the best parts,” she continues. “Particularly the big group scenes, I felt more dialed in than I have [in the past] to understanding French and to just being in awe of these people who flip between languages all the time. I always think of it like a split screen running through these people’s heads, with words flying up on either side that are from completely different languages. And being able to navigate between the two of those is so impressive to me and the bigger group scenes I noticed that I was able to immerse myself in that even more.”

“Ghostsfellas” – Jay angers a local restaurateur when he uses a recipe at his restaurant that was given to him by Pete, on the CBS Original series GHOSTS, Thursday, Feb. 20 (8:31-9:01 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network, and streaming on Paramount+ (live and on demand for Paramount+ with SHOWTIME subscribers, or on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers the day after the episode airs)*. Series star Rose McIver directed the episode. Pictured (L-R): Director Rose McIver. Photo: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS ©2024 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

McIver also points to shooting the flashback scenes as one of the joys of directing. “I had a lot of fun with the flashback sequences, being able to shoot Pete in the travel agency,” she says. “That’s just a huge moment of appreciation for our crew—location and our production design team, costumes and makeup. Everybody is able to just drop into the 1980s so fast! And the way we shoot, we’re filming in the 1980s in the morning, and then we’re all back on stages in the afternoon, and everybody has to be present day; everything turns on a dime. And I love what they built. This travel agency is a real functioning travel agency that we found that we were able to shoot in—that is such an amazing time capsule. I really enjoyed that. That was a standout element for me.”

Elsewhere in the episode, the ghosts tried to navigate complicated roommate dynamics, leading to various different groups interacting and occasionally scheming to get their way. That meant for McIver, as a director, there were different scene dynamics to balance with each new pairing.

“It’s wonderful because every actor responds differently to direction and has a different skill set and has a different way of communicating,” McIver says. “And the lucky thing about directing on a show that you’ve worked on for four years is we have an incredible shorthand, and I know most of the working styles of my cast. I was really lucky, day one, I had Sheila [Carrasco, who plays Flower] and Rebecca [Wisocky, who plays Hetty]; Sheila had an immense amount of dialogue, and she has a phenomenal memory. And she and Rebecca are both very technical actors, and can juggle lots of very small, specific requests at once.”

“So to begin with scenes with those two, where you’re never going to have to worry about somebody being in somebody else’s light, or somebody overlapping somebody else in their dialogue, or somebody missing the comedic timing because they were trying to find a line that they were struggling with, they’re real weapons like that,” she continues. “And I could talk ad nauseam about every cast member in this way; they all do have very unique sets. But some people are more impulsive, and some people want more time with the material, and they’re able to go to a deeper place when they find what they do understand and appreciate [what they need] about any given scene. So you just kind of learn to work with everybody’s strengths.”

“And every time people get paired in a new dynamic, it kind of creates a very different work environment,” she points out. “In some ways, that keeps everything very fresh on set. And after four years, that’s a valuable place to be able to get to.”

As McIver looks back on her directing debut, she’s also hopeful about what it will mean for the other members of the show’s creative team. (The series was just picked up for two additional seasons.) “I know that a lot of the other cast, it motivated them to begin shadowing and make their own content and work towards at least exploring a directorial avenue,” McIver says. “And I honestly think it’s so valuable for any actor, whether you actually end up wanting to direct an episode of television or not, just taking that time to shadow and make the most of this incredible opportunity to look inside the workings of a production of this scale is just so informative. It gives you an even deeper appreciation for all of the people who go into making the sausage.”

“I’m excited to see how things transpire for them within the coming years because there’s a lot of untapped potential in a lot of the people around me up there,” she continues. “And that’s within the cast and crew.”

GHOSTS, Thursdays, 8:30/7:30c, CBS

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