Los Angeles – PaleyFest, the premier television festival produced by The Paley Center for Media, recently presented some new and favorite television shows to the public at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

Two shows that were featured were the comedy-fantasy Ghosts and the sitcom The Neighborhood, both on CBS.

 

Ghosts

 

The series is about a married couple from New York, portrayed by Rose McIver (as Samantha Arondekar, a freelance journalist) and Utkarsh Ambudkar (Jay Arondekar, an unemployed chef) who inherit a beautiful country house. Later, they find out that there are ghosts who died over a thousand-year period on the old mansion’s grounds.

After recovering from an accident in which she fell down the stairs, Samantha can see and hear the ghosts.

The spirits are played by Devan Chandler Long (Thorfinn, a Viking and the oldest of the ghosts), Richie Moriarty (Pete Martino, a Pinecone Trooper leader who was shot accidentally through the neck with an arrow by one of his scouts), Brandon Scott Jones (Captain Isaac Higgintoot, a closeted gay American Revolutionary officer who died of dysentery), Danielle Pinnock (Alberta Haynes, a Prohibition-era jazz singer who died drinking poisoned moonshine), Asher Grodman (Trevor Lefkowitz, a wealthy Wall Street trader who died from a heart attack while he was sans pants), Roman Zaragoza (Sasappis, a cynical Lenape Native American), Sheila Carrasco (Susan Montero, a hippie who died while trying to befriend a bear), and Rebecca Wisocky (Hetty Woodstone, the lady of the manor and the original owner of the Woodstone country estate).

Ghosts scored the biggest comedy debut this season and is averaging 8.31 million viewers. The show is now on its second season.

The quirky comedy by showrunners and executive producers Joe Port and Joe Wiseman has become Paramount+’s number one comedy. It was adapted from the British series of the same title and was created by Mathew Baynton, Simon Farnaby, Martha Howe-Douglas, Jim Howick, Laurence Rickard, and Ben Willbond.

Joe Port, who joined the panel with some of the cast members, shared what he thought made people want to dive in and fall in love with the characters: “I got to pay tribute to the British show, which Joe (Wiseman) and I are fans of. It’s something really special. When we watched it, we took to it and thought it was very adaptable. It was something that could be transported to America because of the focus on the ghost and the archetypes. We could sink our teeth into American history.”

Life has changed for the actors after working on Ghosts. McIver said it was a learning experience for her. “I am from New Zealand. I get to learn American history. I’ve got this great new family of incredible people to work with and the most incredibly supportive audience who we finally get to meet some of.”

Ambudkar shared, “I was running with Bhumi, my son, in a neighborhood and this woman was like, ‘Oh, are you on Ghosts?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I am.’ And she’s like, ‘Well, that’s our show. We watch it every Thursday. Welcome to the neighborhood.’ I’ve been living in the neighborhood for some time and I’m just starting to get recognized. I trick or treated at her house. It’s cool, though. That’s a nice change.”

Moriarty recalled, “Speaking of trick or treaters, I had a little girl who dressed up as my character show up at my door on Halloween, not knowing that I lived there. I live in New Jersey and this little girl rang my doorbell. I had just put a little bucket of candy out on the steps. We were having dinner.

“I have two little kids. I was like, give us five minutes of peace while we eat dinner, and then we’ll come back out and give out candy. My doorbell rings as soon as I put the bucket out. I was like, what? What is your problem? I went to the door and this little girl is dressed as Pete and her jaw just dropped. Her mom is there, and her jaw also dropped. My jaw was dropping, too. They freaked out. I freaked out. It was incredible.”

Long shared that he has a lot of interactions with the show’s fans about his Viking character. “I went to a little brunch, and I was waiting to pick my car up. There was a lady in her 70s and she was like, ‘You know who you remind me of?’ I was like, oh gosh. She’s going to say, Conor McGregor or Jason Momoa. She said, ‘You look like this guy from Ghosts.’ I was like, ‘Thorfinn?’ She’s like, ‘Yeah.’ ‘I am Thorfinn.’ Then I told her a lot of unsolicited stories. We had so much fun.”

Wisocky said that she did a lot of research for her character. “A lot of us have really enjoyed doing a deep dive on the research of our own particular time period. I certainly did, and I read a lot of things that I read in high school and college. It didn’t really land with me in the same way that they did when I read them from the perspective of someone who’s going to have to embody the thoughts, feelings, and circumstances of a woman in the 1900s in America.

“That’s been very fulfilling for me just as a human being. It’s something that has really resonated with the audience, too. The jokes deal with things that are provocative and resonant in a way that is very light, silly, and delightful.”

Asked whether the mansion that they shoot in is a real one, Port disclosed, “The exteriors you see are of real mansions in a town called Montebello, which is a couple of hours outside of Montreal. But then we shot the pilot in Los Angeles and at a real mansion by USC. Then they built a replica of that mansion on a sound stage.”

 

 

The Neighborhood

 

Created by Jim Reynolds, The Neighborhood is a series that follows a white Midwestern family as they adjust to moving into a predominantly black neighborhood in Pasadena, California.

Premiering in 2018, the series was renewed in January 2022 for a fifth season.

Attending PaleyFest were some members of the cast – Max Greenfield, Beth Behrs, Tichina Arnold, Sheaun McKinney, and actor-director-executive producer Cedric the Entertainer.

Shown to the PaleyFest audience was “Welcome to the Dreamgirls,” which was an exclusive sneak peek of an episode to come out later this season. It was the directorial debut of Cedric the Entertainer.

Asked what it was like to be behind the camera, Cedric replied, “CBS is a big platform to have to do a show. But I’ve been with the show from the very beginning. I know the actors well. We all love each other. They had my back. Then we had a really fun episode. One where we get to see Tichina sing and perform. We had the lovely Shanola Hampton and Brandee Evans on the show.

“When you are a director, you want to be organized. You want to know the shots that you want and try to add some creativity, things that I thought would be fun, what would be my take on the written word and how I’d bring that to life. I was really happy that I had an opportunity to direct one.”

As to how The Neighborhood started, Cedric said, “Jim Reynolds created the show. I had a deal with CBS to develop and they liked the idea of the show. A really great executive that was there at the time, Julie Woodworth, wanted me to really think about the show. It needed some work at the time. It didn’t fit my personality and so we worked it out. We went through the shaping of it, and it became something that I saw that had great potential.”