Over four seasons, Rebecca Wisocky has made Ghosts’ Lady of the House, Hetty Woodstone, one of the most simultaneously silly and dramatic characters on television. From helping her great great great niece with dicey business advice from beyond the grave to hooking up with the house’s resident pantless frat bro, we’ve seen Hetty gain a new lease on life 130 years after she died. Now in Season 4, we’ve seen her running the rumor mill with Sasappis (Román Zaragoza), comforting Trevor (Asher Grodman) over the loss of his dog, and begging Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) to bring her cocaine when he eventually dies. As the show prepares to make its return this week, we can expect to see Hetty learning a major revelation about her lineage, and at some point in the upcoming episodes, we’ll see her face off with her evil ex-husband, Elias (Matt Walsh), and finally discover her ghost power.
Over the winter hiatus, I sat down with Wisocky to discuss all things Hetty and what we can expect from the rest of Season 4. During our conversation we spoke about the clever reveal of Hetty’s powers, what to expect from the return of Elias and Rose McIver’s directorial debut, and what Hetty’s TikTok FYP might look like. She also mentioned her personal gratification that so many fans have become H-Money (Hetty/Trevor) shippers and her excitement for fans to see some of the unexpected twists in Hetty’s story. Touching on topics like grief and gratitude, we also discussed the incredible writing behind Ghosts and the immense talent of her co-stars. Wisocky’s recent guest role on The Sex Lives of College Girls and the fantastic crossover campaign between Survivor and Ghosts (which you can read about here) also came up in conversation. You can read the transcript for our chat below.
We Will Finally Learn Hetty’s Power in ‘Ghosts’ Season 4

“That was fun for us to play.”

Image via CBS

I know that you’ve recently said that we’ll get to see what Hetty’s power is this season. Why do you think it’s been so elusive for her all these years, and how does that mystery shape her trajectory this season?
WISOCKY: I thought it was wonderful that the character that is so preoccupied with status was the one that believed that she might not actually have a power at all. That was fun for us to play and fun for the other ghosts to get to mock her and chide her about that. Our showrunners, Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, have been really smart with the way they’ve just kind of slowly revealed these big pivotal secrets in these characters’ moments, like their death stories and their powers. So there’s one left after we reveal Hetty’s power. I think there’s only one left that we need to find out — Sasappis’ death. But I think it’s a good way to keep some of those mysteries alive and those options open for them in terms of different plotlines they want to pursue.
Very exciting! We know that Elias is coming back because you guys posted some very cute sneak peeks when Matt was there filming. Can you tease anything about that episode?
WISOCKY: Yes, Matt Walsh. I don’t know if I can tease anything so specific. I’ll just say that someone needs to figure out how to put a lock on the gates to hell because he comes back entirely too often. [That’s Hetty’s opinion.] My opinion is that I’m delighted when he comes back because he’s so much fun and he’s so funny and game and talented, so we had a blast with him. I think people will be surprised that he’s got more tricks up his sleeve.
I believe at Comic-Con, you told Perri that we would get to see Hetty helping Sam out with the B&B a bit while Jay is busy with the restaurant. We got a taste of that recently with the Farnsbys. What can you say about Hetty’s relationship with Sam in the back half of Season 4?
WISOCKY: Well, I love Rose McIver. I think she’s a wonderful, generous leader. She got to direct an episode this season, and she just crushed it. She did an amazing job. It’s going to be such a good episode. I love that dynamic. I think, in some ways, that familial relationship is one of the backbones of the show. They both have had difficult relationships with their own mothers/children: Sam with her mother and, of course, Hetty with her son and her own mother. They have a lot to work out through one another. So, of course, we’re going to open the restaurant this season, and the success or failure of the restaurant and the time that it takes Jay away from the B&B, I think will leave Sam possibly with Hetty’s help figuring out the future success of the B&B.
H-Money Fans Have Some “Surprising Twists” To Look Forward to in ‘Ghosts’ Season 4

“I’m very happy that the fans are invested in seeing more of them together.”

Image via CBS

So Hetty and Trevor, or H-Money, as they’ve been affectionately dubbed by the internet, I’m obsessed with their delicious, complicated relationship. It’s been really fun to pick up on the crumbs, like his reaction to her dress and her reaction to him maybe getting sucked off. What does the future of that relationship look like to you?
WISOCKY: First of all, I’m so happy, and I feel personally gratified that there are so many H-Money/Tretty shippers out there who are so invested in their relationship. And yeah, they really do read between the lines with every little look that we give one another or how close we’re standing next to one another. Asher Grodman and I have had so much fun talking about the relationship and where it can go. Both of us enjoy the parts of it that are about competition and conniving a plot. They’re so very different, and yet they’re so similar as creatures. So, I’m very happy that the fans are invested in seeing more of them together, and they will not be disappointed this season, I’ll say that. There are some surprising twists for H-Money this year.
I love when they’re scheming, whether together or against each other. It’s great. I’m also always an advocate for more flashbacks on the show.
WISOCKY: Me too!
I really loved Thor and Sass’ first meeting for Christmas, so I was wondering, what are some flashbacks that you would like to see not just in Hetty’s life but in her death and friendship with these other ghosts over, like, 150 years?
WISOCKY: I’ve said it before, this show has thousands of years of history to play with. I mean, it’s such a remarkable, unique strength that the writers have that they can go to so many different places. Our production design team, led by Zoë Sakellaropoulo, and our costume design team, led by Carmen Alie, are so gifted and have such attention to historical specificity and detail that the flashbacks are just so incredibly juicy and so fun for us as characters that normally have to be in the same outfit every day for us to play. When we get to be alive, we get to actually touch props, and so I very much love the flashbacks.
Oh boy, there’s so many of them that I’m interested in, both for my character and for the other characters. I’m dying to see Sheila Carrasco’s life pre-cult. I want to see much more of Thor and Sass before anyone else was around. I’m really interested in where the heck Hetty was going when she went to Michigan in that fateful year of her death. I’m interested in her relationship with her mother, who was involuntarily institutionalized by her father, and I’m most interested in the period after her death, where all the other ghosts were trapped in the dirt, so she was profoundly alone without any guidance or anyone to tell her what it meant to be a ghost and how to do it.
I imagine it must have been so startling to have three ghosts just pop up suddenly when they finally got back to the house.
WISOCKY: There were quite a few things that she would have been startled by, not least was Nancy and the other basement ghosts, probably. And watching life continue without her, watching her home change, and her son deal with her passing and the manner in which she died. I think we’ve got a great deal many stories to tell.
Rebecca Wisocky Calls the ‘Ghosts’ Cast “The Luckiest, Happiest Group of People”

“It’s such a great gift that Joe Port and Joe Wiseman have given me.”

Image via CBS

So we’re almost at the halfway point of the season. We’ve got about half of the Easter eggs from the title card. Is it safe to assume that the shamrock pillow is for Hetty?
WISOCKY: Well! [Laughs] Let’s see, who else could it be for? It could be someone taking up needle-pointing, Samantha. I don’t know. I’ll say this, Hetty has certainly had a bee in her bonnet about the Irish for a very long time, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all if she has more to say on that topic this season.
I love how much of a hedonist Hetty has become in her death, with her washing machine erotica, her running the rumor mill with Sass, and her constant quest for cocaine. How much fun is it for you to just go all out in those more indulgent aspects of her?
WISOCKY: It’s such a wonderful character. It’s such a great gift that Joe Port and Joe Wiseman have given me. And yes, she gets to be incredibly just voracious with the way she goes after all these passions of hers and all these new things that she’s learning and craving, yet she zips right back to being an uptight stick in the mud with morals and social mores of her time. So those contradictions are what is most fun. If she were just rampant hedonism every day, that would be one thing, but she gets to be this mercurial, difficult, unpredictable creature that’s just filled with contradictions, and that is a great, great gift for an actor.
There are so many layers that you bring to her and that the writing brings, and it’s delicious to unpack all those little contradictions.
WISOCKY: It’s delicious to play. I wanted to thank you, too, for the piece that you wrote about grief. I thought it was just very, very smart and very astute, and I’m sorry about the loss of your cat. I lost my dog this past year, actually while we were filming part one of the Christmas episode, which is why I’m in very little of it. But the power that our show has shown to be able to be a safe harbor and a place of community during times of grief has been very moving to me.
Thank you. That means so much to me. This has been a tough year, and this show has definitely made it just a little bit easier. You have blown me away so many times with this show, both dramatically and comedically. Is there a scene or an episode in Season 4 that you’re particularly proud of?
WISOCKY: You’re going to see new colors to the Hetty palette this year. You haven’t seen them yet, but there are some kind of exciting, very unexpected things that happen for Hetty in the second part of Season 4 that I look forward to people weighing in on, I’ll say that.
Ooh I’m very excited for that! Another one of the things that I love about Ghosts is how you can mix up this ensemble into pretty much any combination and have something hilarious and magical happen. Is there a character or group of characters that you get to team up with in the coming episodes that surprised you?
WISOCKY: Well, we say this, like, at least once every other week, we’ll be in a scene together, and we’ll say, “Wait, have we ever done this specific combination, just us, guys?” And, of course, at this point, we must have, but yeah, you tweak one little thing and it’s a different song. We all love working with one another so much. Again, it’s smart of you to make the comment that there are endless permutations based on just how very different these characters are and how different their points of view are.
I was saying from Season 1 that I was dying to work more with Román Zaragoza, who I love so much — such as smart, kind, actor that has such a huge, bright future in front of him. So I was happy that they let us get up to no good this year together. I’m hoping for more of that. I love working with Sheila Carrasco so much. We know that they were sentenced, for lack of a better word, to be roomies, so I think people might see a little something happen there. But, yeah, it’s the luckiest, happiest group of people I’ve ever been forced to spend all eternity with, ever.
I really loved the episode with you and Román being in your Gossip Girl era. That was so fun.
WISOCKY: I know, I know. We had so much fun.
I am so ready to see Hetty and Flower actually be roommates now that Sheila’s back, so that’s great to hear.
Rebecca Wisocky Reveals Which Shows From Her Filmography Are on Hetty’s Watch List

“She’s a burgeoning young feminist.”

I am a big music person, so I always make playlists when I write or for stuff I’m working on. Do you have a song or a playlist that reminds you of Hetty or gets you in the headspace to play her?
WISOCKY: You know, it’s so funny, I don’t, but I use metaphors of music and musicality in my work and the way I approach language so often. If anything, I feel like there’s a certain tempo and cadence to the way Hetty speaks and the way she’s written, but I haven’t necessarily assigned a song to that. Maybe that’s something that would be fun for the fans to do, to make playlists for us. But yeah, she definitely has a very particular musicality to her, but I don’t have a song that I listen to to get into the Hetty groove if that’s what you’re asking.
Well, that’s definitely something to explore with her!
WISOCKY: Yes! I love that.
I was rewatching the previous Christmas special ahead of the next one, so I have a bit of a silly one here. What do you think Hetty’s TikTok “for you page” would look like?
WISOCKY: Oh, I’m so terrible with the TikTok. Danielle Pinnock is the queen. She’s forced me to do exactly two TikToks, so they’re up on my TikTok page, and I’ve done very little else. So I assume that when you say “TikTok for you” that means something that’s been curated, based on my desires. So what would Hetty’s desires be? Well, it would be a lot of wood-chopping videos, and it would be manners and fashion. She’s a fan of pedestrianism, of speed walking, so speed walking competitions. And soap operas! I mean, she’s so deeply into Bodices and Barons. So much of her understanding of what romance and sexuality is has that kind of heightened, risque sense of a soap opera because that’s what she loves to devour on television.
I love that she would be up in the Bodice and Barons edits.
WISOCKY: Absolutely. And Paris! She just about drove their Mini Cooper all the way to Paris. If she could have, she would have.
Speaking of Hetty’s taste in television, you’ve been on so many of my favorite shows throughout your career, and I love that with Survivor and Bodices and Barons, we sort of have a little glimpse into Hetty’s TV tastes. I’m wondering, from your own filmography, what do you think Hetty would enjoy the most?
WISOCKY: That I’ve been on? Well, you know what? She would love Sex Lives of College Girls, which I’m a recurring character on right now. She would absolutely love it. I think it’s so lovely that Hetty was kind of a– I mean, she’s not a very good feminist, but she’s a burgeoning young feminist. Cut to over 100 years later, and they’re this group of incredibly empowered, opinionated, sexually aware, inquisitive young women making their start in the world at Essex College; I think Hetty would love all the drama on that show.
Absolutely! I think she would also get a kick out of Devious Maids.
WISOCKY: Oh, yes! Well, yes. I mean, she definitely would love the Devious Maids. I think those two, Evelyn Powell and Hetty Woodstone, are distant cousins, for sure.
Definitely. Speaking of Sex Lives of College Girls, you’re in a handful of episodes this season, and you’re really nailing that whole vibe of the teacher whose approval you want that much more because it’s so hard to get. What can you tell fans about your experience on that show with Gracie?
WISOCKY: I’ll start by saying how blown away I was by her talent, by her vocal talent. Anyone who follows her band, Lawrence — she has a band with her and her brother — would not be surprised by this. But if you happen to not already be a fan of Lawrence, you should be, A, and B, you will be just gobsmacked by what a talented singer she is. The fact that she has this relationship with this withholding mentor on the show, it’s been interesting. I like the way they’ve directed it, and I like where they’re going with it. And of course, it’s also good, silly fun, but it’s something that I think a lot of people who are artists coming up can relate to, you know, wanting and wanting so much to garner the approval and endorsement of someone they believe to be senior or superior to them. And, of course, so much of the journey of an artist is finding that within yourself.
‘Ghosts’ Season 4’s Next Episode Sees a Major Revelation for Hetty

“That’s a very good one and has a very good Hetty reveal in it, as well.”

Image via CBS

I love that. Popping back over to Ghosts. Do you have a favorite episode from the season?
WISOCKY: I’m pretty excited for everyone to see the Christmas episode. There’s a double possession, which is a big to do in the house, and we get a chance to see Rose McIver and Utkarsh Ambudkar just go to town.
It’s so good!
WISOCKY: The Christmas episodes are always so good. I love that they give us a full hour to play with, and there are so many things in the Christmas episode that are just technically impressive and also just uproariously funny and also heartwarming. I love that we get to see more of Jay’s family; Bernard White and Sakina Jaffrey are two actors that I admire a great deal, and they come in to play Jay’s parents, and Punam Patel is back. It’s just a whole lot of good stuff of everything that Ghosts does really, really well in the Christmas episode.
It’s so much fun. I was rewatching it yesterday to write another piece, and Rose and Utkarsh are incredible with those impressions.
WISOCKY: Oh, so good! But then the one that’s coming up, too, that I think will air right after we’re through with our winter hiatus, maybe on the end of January, January 30th or something like that, called “The Not So Silent Partner.” That’s a very good one and has a very good Hetty reveal in it, as well. That’s an episode I’m excited for people to see. And, of course, Hetty’s power episode. You know what? I can’t choose favorites. They’re all so good. I love the first episode of the season, I loved Patience.
The Halloween episode.
WISOCKY: The Halloween episode! The Halloween episode is always so good.
I couldn’t pick a favorite, either. What is something that we haven’t necessarily seen on screen that you maybe believe about Hetty? Do you have any personal head cannons for her that you use in your performance?
WISOCKY: Well, that’s such a very broad question. [Laughs] I feel like I’ve been very vocal with what I believe about her, and I leave room to continue to be surprised, as well.
You mentioned in a previous interview that you’ve started doing some writing for yourself. Would you ever want to write a script or a play, or something for an existing project or something entirely new?
WISOCKY: It’s for me right now.
And with Rose jumping behind the camera this season, is that ever something that you would want to try your hand at?
WISOCKY: We’ll see. I enjoy directing actors very, very much. I enjoy dramaturgy and scene work, and I’m asked to do that a lot for friends and colleagues, and that scratches my directing itch for now.
Nice. In the sense of behind-the-scenes, Ghosts really reminds me a lot of Star Trek in terms of hands-on collaboration, so it would be nice to see all of you get to take your turn on an episode. That would be really fun.
WISOCKY: Yeah, indeed!
You can watch previous episodes of Ghosts on Paramount+ and new episodes return to CBS on Thursday, January 30.

Ghosts (US)

Release Date

October 7, 2021

Network

CBS

Directors

Christine Gernon, Jaime Eliezer Karas, Katie Locke O’Brien, Nick Wong, Jude Weng, Pete Chatmon, Richie Keen, Alex Hardcastle, Kimmy Gatewood, Matthew A. Cherry, Cortney Carrillo

Writers

Emily Schmidt, John Timothy, Lauren Bridges, Sophia Lear, Guy Endore-Kaiser, Rishi Chitkara, Julia Harter, Skander Halim, Zora Bikangaga

Cast

Rose McIver

Samantha Arondekar

Utkarsh Ambudkar

Jay Arondekar

Brandon Scott Jones

Isaac Higgintoot