a [lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] On Story is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story."

A look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

[Narrator] This week's "On Story," the producer and showrunner of CBS's hit comedy series "Ghosts," Joe Wiseman.

- These are ghosts, but we also want them to play as humans.

Or you want, we want people to relate to them as human beings, which they probably philosophically are, and, you know, that have feelings and wants and all that stuff.

I think that was something great that the British series did is they decided not to have their ghosts be translucent or floating or whatever.

It's like they're people.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [Narrator] This week on "On Story," producer and showrunner, Joe Wiseman, discusses his work behind the American adaptation of the BBC hit comedy series, "Ghosts."

Wiseman deep dives into the art of adaptation, finding the perfect cast, and the process of recreating the story for an American audience.

[typewriter dings] [door creaks] [peaceful music] - Oh my.

- This is 100% the most incredible moment of my life, apart from my wedding.

- And it's all ours.

- What did that girl just say?

- She must be related to you, like a niece.

A great, great, great... - No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

She's no niece of mine.

Look at her.

She's exposing her knees, and she's got a tattoo.

- How did the prospect of the project even land, or come about?

Obviously being a preexisting show, currently airing across the pond.

- Joe and I had, about five years ago, written a pilot that did not get shot.

It was called "Eternally Yours."

And it was based on vampires who had been a couple of- who had been married for 500 years and were really sick of each other.

In our vampire lore, divorce was not an option, so they were literally stuck- and it, and Joe Port painfully points out that it was an analogy for his and I, sort of, contractually obligated relationship that seemed to have just kept going and going and going.

The pilot did not get shot.

So, you know, the official scorecard, it was a failure.

However, when "Ghosts" came around, CBS was familiar with us, and they remembered, "Oh, remember Joe and Joe wrote that vampire-" and so, to them, it was like, oh, they can write genre comedy.

Let's take their temperature and see if they like this.

So they sent us a link to the BBC Show, which I was unfamiliar with.

I don't know if you could get it in the States at that time.

You can now, the BBC version is fantastic.

You should absolutely check it out.

It's on HBO Max.

Also, check out the American version.

[crowd laughs] And I watched the first five minutes, I was like, I'm in.

- Wow.

- Unbelievable.

- Well, they seem really nice.

Let's give him a chance.

- Yeah.

- Look at that.

- What is that?

- Is that a lake?

- Oh, I hate it when that happens.

- It's a lake.

- Well, there's only two of them.

Still plenty of room for us.

- This is gonna make one incredible hotel.

[ghosts gasp] - What is hotel?

- Well, Robin, a hotel is.

- Kill them.

- I loved it because it was hard funny, but also, like, ultimately, like, a gentle nice show.

It had a great positive message.

The British creators, who are actually, most of the ghosts in the British series are actual, the creators and writers of it.

They had to approve us.

So they also sent over this "Eternally Yours" script, just to get us approved, and they liked it enough that they let us do it.

So I like that because, like, throughout your career and even trying to get in, things that may seem like failures, like this pilot which did not get shot, and was like, okay, turned out to lead directly to Joe and I being able to do the show, and eventually getting it on the air.

- Wow.

- Okay, this is huge.

- And it's all ours.

- I gotta admit, it would be nice to have a little bit of space.

- Exactly, New York is full of people.

We're never alone.

[dramatic sting] - This must be them, the new folks that own the house.

- Can you believe this place has been in my family for six generations?

- She's a relative of yours, Hetty.

- Well, I should hope not with her exposed knees and that saucy hairdo.

- The first thing you ask when you're thinking about adapting something is why does this need to be adapted to American TV?

What's the point?

You know, the British series, the house is occupied with, you know, British archetypes from throughout history.

So if you move the show here, we will fill the house with American archetypes.

And then we started talking about who would be fun to have in the house.

Some of that was geographically, sort of, dependent.

And so we started, like, zeroing in, okay, where do we want to set this?

It was a, sort of, a watershed moment when we were able to realistically place a Viking in upstate New York, which is, there is strong evidence that they, you know, they were up in Newfoundland, I think, up in Canada, and they kept very detailed logs of their journeys down the coast.

And some indicate, they obviously didn't use the term New York, but like, they were like, okay, they were, probably sailed down.

So we're like, we can realistically place a Viking, that is so much fun.

That's surprising and it's technically accurate.

And it was also just like, who doesn't want, like, a big dumb Viking running around their show yelling all the time?

- Why, why?!

Trash can right there.

- When we sort of like figured that out, we're like, okay, let's do upstate New York.

There's plenty of other American histories to draw from there as well.

And then we sort of just kept talking and talking and trying to figure out who's fun, but who goes well together, what are good dynamics?

And we ended up with the eight ghosts that we have, we talked a lot about the pilot story, and ultimately we decided, like, it's such a specific premise and the British series did such a great job of setting up that premise in a believable way, which was so important to us.

Like, you have to buy that not only, okay, we've all seen enough stuff, we buy that there's ghosts and they exist, but get to the point where, like, she can see the ghosts and the husband credibly believes that she does.

- Good morning, babe.

- Oh.

[Ghosts] Good morning.

- Hey, last night got pretty hot, huh?

- Oh, they're in here.

- Oh, of course they are.

- We basically used their first two episodes as a template.

The major story points are all the same.

There's a lot of differences because, you know, our characters have their own jokes, and their own point of view and everything.

But then we, after that we both knew that, you know, ours would sort of take it- so we didn't want to do a carbon copy of it after that.

So there was a few episodes that we definitely take inspiration from, but after that, we then wanted to basically do our own thing.

- So how did you hit the balance of Jay being that support system for Sam, and making it believable for the audience?

- The big breakthrough we had with the husband character, was that not only does he believe her, but he's excited and almost jealous of it.

We didn't want him to be, sort of, the typical kind of sitcom husband, who was just sort of like, "Oh, those darn ghosts again, you know, what are they?"

He's actually, like, jealous.

- I know you lied.

- But how, no, I didn't.

- Uh-huh, the ghost told me, and he was genuinely haunting.

I was in the shower, I was nude and then letters just appeared in the steam.

- Trevor.

- The ghost without pants is watching me shower?

Gotta love that.

Sam, why did you lie to me?

- I wanted to help you play with the ghosts, but I really don't like your favorite game.

- Why didn't you just tell me?

- Because I didn't want to upset you and it just seemed easier to blame the ghosts.

- I don't care if you like playing the game or not, okay?

Objectively you should because it's awesome.

But honestly, I just miss my friends.

- I know.

- And you have this whole group of people that, that you can talk to, that I can't even see.

So the other night when we were all playing together, I actually felt like I was part of the gang.

- That was a big breakthrough for us, was that like, he's all in.

You know, we, and we also had, you know, there was hard evidence, she was able to demonstrate a few things that, aside from being like a world class magician, she's probably actually talking to ghosts.

But I think the short answer is just, you know, using the template of the British series was, we were fairly confident that we could get it up and running, 'cause we also wanted to get that premise up and running.

- So how do you find your own originality when there's a pre-existing template for the show and for specific episodes?

- The best example I can think of a show of- was a British episode that we took inspiration from, was Pete's family.

It was our episode five, where Pete's family comes, and Pete finds out that his wife was unfaithful to him while that, while they were alive.

And I love that British episode, I love it.

It was so powerful then when he sees his grandson at the end, you know, and that was like, they nailed it.

Like, we're gonna do the same thing.

But hopefully we'll have our own spin on it.

And I think we did.

I think we changed the way in which Pete found out.

- Sam can track him down for you.

- That's true.

- What's your wife's name?

- Carol Martino, now it's been a while, so you may need to hire a PI, track down some leads.

You're gonna wanna go to every JCPenney, IHOP, anywhere that sells beads.

- Found her.

- Excuse me?

That's her, how did you do that?

- I mean, it's Facebook, it's social media.

We talked about the internet, right?

- Ooh, the thing with the cat movies?

- Yes, that was a very fun two days for both of us, Alberta.

But Facebook is like a, it's a website that's like a bulletin board, where people talk about their lives, they share photos.

- Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Might I understand that this is some sort of modern day publishing instrument from which anyone can spread their message?

- Well, yeah.

- What a tool for disseminating truth.

What a boon to democracy.

- We also changed the reason why the family was coming.

We had Pete more like, I figured, you know, now that these ghosts have Sam, they're gonna want stuff.

And the ghosts who still have family alive, I think that would be very important to them.

So we had it where, where Pete like goaded Sam into coercing, or luring, or having his ex-wife come to the house, which was different than the British series.

Not, I'm not saying better or anything, but it was just sort of like, I felt like that felt our storytelling a little bit more.

- Looks like your wife still lives nearby.

- Oh my god.

Carol, if you are listening, please visit Woodstone Mansion.

Love, Pete.

- Uh, that's not how it works.

- Sam, you gotta invite her for him.

- I mean, what would I even say?

Like, "Hi, your dead husband lives on my property and wants to look at you?"

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- That's pretty good.

- You know, so then we had the device of the book, which at first was merely, that was just gonna be the lore.

Like, that little change actually turned out to be great, because, as we were doing more and more drafts of that episode, that then turned out, like, the answer to Pete letting go and learning forgiveness came from himself from the book, which was something we added.

So I thought, I think just in looking at what was the heart of the episode.

Pete with his family, the heartbreak of finding out and then the learning to let go.

And then honestly just the cheating of being able to see his grandkid run up.

Like that's like, I mean, it's heartbreaking and it, but, and that's gold.

[typewriter dings] - You had to spend a lot of time, I'm sure, bringing this cast together, because you had such incredible characters that are complex, have their own desires, and to find cast members that could fill those roles, I'm sure it was quite a challenge.

Can you just talk about that experience?

- The process is grueling.

It's like you see a lot of people, and a lot of talented people, but who just aren't right for it.

When someone comes in and it's, you're just not feeling it.

It's not like that person's not a good actor or whatever, it's just like they're just not, they're not right for it.

And finding that person takes time.

We were mostly cast, we were still missing a couple people, and we were shooting in a few days, which is, which terrifyingly is actually a common thing that happens on pilots.

It's very nerve-wracking, but it all works out somehow.

And then we had our table read, and in the meantime this looming pandemic, like I'm, you know, was reading articles, I'm like, I don't know.

And then, Friday we have our table read, and then an hour later they say, go home.

We're shutting society down.

So in the interim, we didn't know if that meant that was the end of the project, whatever.

But then we started getting, you know, Zoom auditions, or mostly like recorded auditions.

One of the people who showed up on our video screen was Danielle Pinnock, who plays Alberta.

- Let's go Sam, we don't have all day.

- Okay, you literally have eternity.

- Oh, that's right, thank you for reminding me of my endless purgatory.

- And it was immediately like, from line one, it was like, oh my God, this is, she's, that was a really hard part to find because the character's bigger than life, and it felt like a lot of people who came in were doing a character, they were putting something on.

And when Danielle does it, it just feels very natural and really fun.

And that just came across on the audition that she put together.

- I love what you all do with exploring Alberta and Sasappis's sort of worldview and their experiences and using that to also have conversations about our current, sort of, social climate.

Was that always part of the decision once y'all were going through the archetypes, even at those early stages?

- We're a feel good half hour comedy.

So we do, you know, those issues were never gonna be front facing, but we felt it would be wrong to just ignore that, ignore American history, parts of it, you know, and ignore these issues that are important to people.

And you know, and the way we do that is, like, our writing staff reflects our cast.

It's like we make sure that there's representation and voices in there so that things that are important or things that just aren't in our point of view are brought to our attention and we can deal with them in a sort of, you know, fair and, real way.

- You have fantastic relational dynamics between so many of the characters, including Chessum and Higgintoot, which is one of my favorites.

- Isaac Higgintoot is our closeted Revolutionary War, sort of pompous statesman.

Going into the first season, we weren't sure, we didn't know that he, that the ark was gonna be him coming out.

That's just something that we found along the way.

You know, having a character like that, we did a lot of sort of, like, jokes that aren't done a lot anymore, because it just, you know, they jokes where like, the joke is that he's closeted but he doesn't know it and are funny and it makes sense in this setup.

But they were starting to get old.

I think we as writers were starting to get sick of them.

I think Brandon was starting to like, you know, so we did the D&D episode, where we introduced a love interest, and that's, I think, is when it sort of, like, clicked on us, like, oh, the arc for this episode should be Isaac, you know, coming to terms with who he is himself, and then finally being able to tell the world and we do a little half step in where he tells Hetty, which is one of my favorite scenes and episodes that we did.

And that specific came about just being in Montreal, being on set, and seeing that Rebecca Wisocky and Brandon Scott Jones had a very, like, close relationship, and we were like, okay, let's try some scenes with them together.

And this really sort of like nice friendship between these characters developed.

- You're planning on asking anyone special Isaac, like a certain British officer you murdered perhaps?

- Shh, no, you were still the only one that knows about that.

And no, I am not ready.

God who would've thought that a prom of all things would create such a stressful social situation?

- And so she ended up being the first person that he comes out to.

So I think a lot of it is just watching scenes and seeing what interesting-- that's the one advantage of having 10 characters is there's a lot of different pairings.

And sometimes, you know, we will, not purposely, but sort of like, oh that, those two seem to pop together, or, that was a funny dynamic.

- One of my favorite dynamics ended up being Hetty and Thor, when we ended up finding out that Thor was the one who was reading lullabies to Hetty when she was a kid.

- ♪ Sweet little baby, ♪ ♪ drift off to sleep.

♪ ♪ Dream of stabbing Danish men laughing while they weep.

♪ ♪ When you are a warrior, you'll be strong and tall, ♪ ♪ you'll pillage villages, ♪ ♪ slit men's throats and bash their heads ♪ against the wall.

There you go.

Hetty, there you go.

- Was that also a similar, sort of, build as far as that dynamic, and that scene specifically?

'Cause it just resonates so well?

- Yeah, I love that story, and I honestly, I cannot remember exactly how that came about.

You try to find surprising things about the characters.

So, you know, we were try to find soft things about Thor.

The British series had an episode where they, sort of, revealed that sometimes very young children can see the ghosts.

And we really liked that idea and thought it was really sweet, and it was not me, I don't remember who came up with the idea that, like, oh, maybe one of our ghosts could see ghosts as a small kid, and maybe they would have, they had a relationship, you know, that they didn't really realize.

I don't, honestly, I don't remember.

It was just one of those, it just started, we started talking about it, and the Heady-Thor thing just became it.

- I think it's episode nine where we meet Alberta's stalker.

- Yeah, hey Sam, this is Todd Pearlman, and he's, uh, he's some kind of historian.

- And he shows up at the Mansion.

I would just love to hear like, what was some of the inspiration behind that?

- Things are, sort of, like, kind of form out of ether, but I think it was the idea that like, you know, Alberta wants fame more than anything.

She feels like had she lived, she would've become the most famous singer in the world.

But fame has, like, a dark side, you know, like there's stalkers and, you know.

So we just thought it was a really funny idea that there is an Alberta Haynes super fan, and he's kind of a weirdo.

[chuckles] - Thank you for letting me stay.

It's, it's like a six-hour drive back to Altoona.

- What made you choose Altoona as the location for the museum?

- Must be a new music city, a 21st century New Orleans, no doubt.

[chuckles] - Well, uh, actually the museum is in my garage.

- Ah, as all the best museums are.

- Technically it's my mom's garage.

- Oh, you live with your mom.

- That makes sense.

- Well, academics are often underpaid.

[chuckles] Just wait till his book comes out.

- So when does your book come out?

- Oh, it's planned for a summer release, but really whenever, that's the beauty of self-publishing.

- So yeah, we just started, you know, talking out what that story would be, and, you know, what the specifics are.

I think one of my favorite moments is when he reveals the Alberta Haynes tattoo on his back.

- Oh my God, no!

- And then of course he came back in season two.

He's doing a podcast with Sam, [chuckles] about Alberta's murder.

[typewriter ding] - Setting up the rules of the world very easily for the audience to digest, and then breaking them or just messing with them in a bunch of different fun ways.

Were all those rules already, sort of, laid out by the preexisting show on BBC?

Or did you all have some affordance to do and implement your own things with your own haunted house?

- The basic premise and a lot of the basic rules we definitely had adopted, but if you were to examine episodes, there probably is inconsistency between the two, sort of, like rule sets.

We don't coordinate with them at all about can ghosts do this, can ghosts do that?

But a lot of time is wasted and or spent in the writer's room talking about, like, rules.

And some of it, you know, none of it makes any sense.

It's like, and the-- and when things like that happen, our, sort of, like, remedy is to have the ghosts call it out.

The ghosts are like, "Why don't we fall through the floor?"

Like, "Why can we walk around?

Why can we sit on furniture?"

Short answer is these are ghosts, but we also want them to play as humans.

So you want, we want people to relate to them as human beings, which they probably philosophically are, that have feelings and wants and all that stuff.

So I think that was something great that the British series did is they decided not to have their ghosts be translucent or floating or whatever.

It's like they're people most of the time, they do, they walk through doors and walls, you know, but talking about ghost rules sometimes, like, stories are born.

There's a joke in season two where Flower or someone asks like, you know, like, if a wall were made out of chair material, could I not walk through it?

In the room, it sort of came up, well what if there was a material they couldn't walk through?

And it was like, oh, that's a great idea.

Let's talk about that.

And we sort of talked about what could that be, what is that?

And that led to the vault.

- Can you open it?

- Think so, of course it'll take a while, won't be cheap.

- Mark.

- Say the word, card's on file.

- My crooked husband must have built this to embezzle my riches.

- Hetty thinks there might be riches inside.

- If this thing is filled with gold coins, I am definitely gonna Scrooge McDuck in 'em.

- Can one of you walk through the door and see what's in there.

- I'll do it.

A pine cone trooper's always up for an adventure.

[dramatic music ] - Oh, Peter!

- I've never seen that happen before.

- Pete bounced off the vault door.

- A surface that's impenetrable to ghosts?

I love it when the mythology gets expanded.

- Puny Pete must not be strong enough.

Stand back.

[Thor roars] [thud] - Well, this is mysterious.

- Which was a really fun episode, but also become now, like, a fixture of the house.

We've used the vault in a couple of stories in season two.

I don't think they've aired yet, Halloween did.

Yeah, Halloween we did.

And there's another one coming up where we visit with the vault a lot.

So talking about the ghost rules is always fun, but also like an opportunity to come up with-with stories.

I think that's probably where we have the most sort of, like inventive latitude is that these ghosts can each have, do a specific thing.

It's not like all ghosts can do this.

It's like, okay, Isaac farts basically when you walk through him, you know, Trevor can move things and whatnot.

Again, I think, you know, anytime we introduce a new idea, we just have to make sure that it's consistent with the all the stuff we've done before.

- I know it's sort of asking you to pick your favorite child, [crowd laughs] but do you have, perhaps, a favorite episode?

- The possession episode we did last year.

Utkarsh was so funny as Hetty.

Like it was just such an inspired performance.

- What do you mean I'm inside of Jay's body?

How, when?

Oh!

- That's not mine.

- No, this isn't happening.

Possession isn't real, possession can't be real.

Neither are ghosts, yet here we are.

- Gather the ghosts.

Wait a minute, where are all the ghosts?

Oh no, Isaac would know what to do.

- Hey, Hetty?

Or, Jay.

Whoever, we're right here.

- They're right here.

- That's interesting, she can't see us.

- When we came up with it and we're shooting, and we're like, is this gonna be so dumb and sweaty?

It's like, you don't know.

But I was delighted by it when we were putting it together, and I think it turned out really well.

- Did they do a lot of work so he could study her mannerisms and, sort of, how she performed?

- I think it was mostly just having worked with her and watching her.

I don't think he had her, like, do the scene and then he would, he'd he was just doing it, you know, which was, it was so fun.

- Why does the show with the premise and structure like yours also have the ability to be wholesome and gravitate and resonate with so many people?

- I don't know.

Yeah, that's probably, you know, a question for a sociologist or something.

But my guess would be, sort of, like, you know, I feel like we very purposefully strive to find the sweet and the happy in the show.

You know, the premise is very, kind of, morbid.

It's like, it's these people who are dead and trapped.

But inside that, we look for, like, the happy moments.

We look for the relationships that are satisfying, and for, you know, any way to, sort of, like, find brightness, and that's just like a, you know, something that we like to watch and wanted to put out into the world.

[typewriter dings] - You've been watching On Writing Ghosts with Joe Wiseman on "On Story.

On Story is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story project that also includes the "On Story" radio program, podcast, book series, and the "On Story" archive accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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