𝗔𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵 𝘀𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝘀 𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘇𝘃𝗮𝗵 𝗴𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗺 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝘁
Jewish Telegraph, February 2023
Mike Cohen is relieved that Asher Grodman is wearing trousers — unlike his Ghosts character Trevor — during their Zoom interview
Turning up for work and immediately removing your trousers would normally result in a visit to the HR department for a dressing down, so to speak.
But when actor Asher Grodman arrives on the set of sitcom Ghosts, he is expected to be pantless.
The series, based on the BBC1 comedy of the same name, sees Asher play Trevor Lefkowitz, a Wall Street investor who died while partying at Woodstone mansion — naked from the waist down.
Married couple Samantha (Rose McIver) and Jay Arondekar (Utkarsh Ambudkar) inherit the house — and after Samantha falls down the stairs, and is dead for three minutes, she discovers she can see the ghosts.
Joining Trevor in the afterlife are Lenape Native American Sasappis (Román Zaragoza), closeted gay American Revolution officer Captain Isaac Higgintoot (Brandon Scott Jones), jazz singer Alberta Haynes (Danielle Pinnock), scout leader Pete Martino (Richie Moriarty), hippy Flower (Sheila Carrasco), Viking Thorfinn (Devan Chandler Long) and Samantha’s great-great-great-great-grandmother Hetty Woodstone (Rebecca Wisocky).
The American version of Ghosts, which is available to watch on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer, is the breakthrough Asher wanted after being “a failed actor for like two decades”.
His desire to become an actor began at his barmitzvah.
The 35-year-old explained: “I was a very, very shy kid, and acting was never on my radar.
“Having a barmitzvah and being up in front of people for the first time was definitely the initial step because it was the first time that I was just allowing myself to be seen by people in any format.
“So that was the first ‘Oh, I’m part of something here’.”
New York City-born Asher added: “After that, I was in the school jazz band and it was very bad and I was basically hiding in the back.
“And then, in one fell swoop, everyone graduated and no one was left in the band. So suddenly I had to do things and I was playing guitar, but again was very bad.
“They wanted to do Brown Eyed Girl. This was in the seventh grade and I had this huge crush on a girl in my class, so I changed the lyrics to ‘hazel eyed girl’ for her, which, of course, mortified her and completely backfired.
“But it was the beginning of me finding a sense of connection with the community because people had seen me do this thing that was very bold and failed . . . and was witnessed by everyone.
“That was the beginning of getting into storytelling, getting into performance, getting into something. And then there were 20 years of failure and I couldn’t get a job to save my life.
“And then a few things here and there, a few little guest stars, few plays, and then this job changed everything.”
A lot of people may have given up after so many years of not making it, but Asher describes it as having “a sickness”.
He said: “If someone tells me I can’t do it, and I have no shot, it just makes me double down and fight harder.”
He recalled that he almost gave up acting after a year of appearing in plays.
“I was doing play after play after play,” he said. “And the last one I did was Amadeus, playing Mozart, which was so much fun.
“And afterwards, I was like, alright, well this is it. I did a whole year of theatre; I was employed the entire time — and then nothing had changed.
“There were no new opportunities; there was no breakthrough with auditions. It was just the same. And I contemplated giving up at that point. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it because I had invested so much.”
Asher appeared in a number of short films, as well as writing, directing and producing one of his own, The Train, in 2015.
He also had roles in episodes of TV shows, including Law & Order, House of Cards, Chicago Med, Succession and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
But his life changed when he auditioned in 2020 for Ghosts, which is currently midway through its 22-episode second season and has been renewed for a third.
“I got very lucky that they chose me,” he said. “I’ve auditioned for a lot of things and read a lot of scripts. And this is really a credit to the BBC version because our pilot is basically very similar to the BBC pilot.
“It was the best pilot I’ve ever read. And what made it so special was that the concept is so brilliant, it’s universal. But also you can just go in so many different directions. The possibilities are endless.
“And I remember after I first read it, I was like, well, these writers are screwed because I don’t know how you ever make a decision about which of those many directions you go in because you have so many options.
“But it was so funny, and I think my first take away was this thing works.”
American adaptations of British shows don’t always work. For every The Office there is a flop such as The Inbetweeners.
“That was a fear,” Asher said. “I was so confident in the script that I felt if we could just survive the pilot-making process, which is like an obstacle course, and then if we could somehow survive the pandemic, that if we just got this thing on the air, it would be a hit that people would watch.
“I never anticipated we would be the number one comedy on television. That’s crazy. That’s another whole echelon.
“But I did think that it’s so funny and so universal. And the concept is so charming that if we could just get it on the air, it would work.”
He admitted that he felt “intimidated” by the BBC version so he avoided watching it until he had finished shooting the first season.
“It’s like going to school and trying to make your way where there’s already a really cool kid who has his own style, you know?
“And I was like, if I start looking at what they’re doing, I’m going to be intimidated and copy what they’re doing. So I needed to create a safe space to try and fail on my own before looking at what they did.”
He added: “Before we shot season two, I had seen it all. And then I was going to our writers and being like, ‘Well, you know, Simon Farnaby gets to do this in the BBC version, could I do that?
“I wanted to steal all their ideas because they came up with brilliant storylines.”
Farnaby, who co-created the original series, plays Julian Fawcett MP — who died at the Button House mansion without his trousers on. Unlike Trevor, though, he has no redeeming features.
“I could almost imagine Trevor being Julian’s son or something where it’s like a softer version of him, where he’s at the core of Trevor,” Asher explained.
“And I think this wasn’t in the script, but this is something that I brought to Trevor that there has to be this puppyish quality to him because he’s saying all this stuff that can rub people the wrong way, and he’s pantless and all that jazz.
“But at his core, he just wants to have the party and have fun all the time.
“So I saw this puppyish thing that Julian doesn’t have. That said, Julian has some incredible storylines that the BBC version has come up with. They do a whole thing with him screwing with the husband’s emails that I love and think is just a brilliant idea.
“And I met Simon, who I’m in awe of. He’s so talented.”
In one of the later episodes of the first season, the reason for Trevor’s lack of trousers is explained — showing a previously unseen caring side to his character.
Asher said the writers asked him how he thought Trevor had died and how he had lost his trousers.
“I gave them some ideas that I thought were really funny. And I’m very grateful that they ignored all of them because what they came up with was so much better,” he laughed.
Trevor also throws in Jewish words in his conversations, like “oy gevalt” and “mishegas”, while in the second season’s Christmas episodes, he mentions Chanukah.
So whose decision was it to make Trevor Jewish?
He replied: “Before I answer that, one of — if not my favourite — part of Trevor is that if you described him, you might say he’s like a Lehman Brothers guy; he’s a frat guy; he’s puppyish; he’s a party dude; he’s a drug addict; he’s a sports fan; he’s a womaniser; he’s a misogynist.
“He’s friendly, he’s supportive, he’s loyal. There’s so many things you would say about him before you would define him as Jewish.
“And so his religion is just part of who he is instead of the defining characteristic of who he is.
“And I think that’s how anyone who is part of a group, particularly one that is historically marginalised, wants to be seen; not to be defined by a particular thing.
“So I love that about him and because I am Jewish and grew up not seeing very many Jewish characters represented. I remember asking my parents, ‘Is there any chance that Batman is Jewish?’ And they were like, ‘No, Batman is not Jewish’.
“So it’s especially wonderful because obviously it’s an identity that I’m familiar with, and so I can layer smaller things in. And our showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman are both Jewish, so that also has given us a license.
“And to answer your question, I believe my guess is that their intention was always for him to be Jewish.
“I don’t know that for sure, but he belonged to a traditionally Jewish frat. I’m very grateful that they have allowed his Judaism to be part of him.
“And then if they give me a line, I’ll always pitch ‘great, great line. Can I say it in Yiddish?’ So I’m always trying to get a little more in there because I think it’s fun and exciting. And not many shows do that.”
The Covid pandemic didn’t help the genesis of the show.
The pilot was shot in March, 2020, but it was a full 17 months before the cast finally started filming the first season.
“I remember I got scared when there was a day where CBS dropped like five pilots and I was like, Oh my God, they could come for us,” Asher recalled.
“But ours had the best story. Ours had the best concept. It was the best script. And so I had confidence in that. I lost confidence a little bit when I heard that CBS likes the show, but they think it’s a little expensive.
“And the second that money came into the equation, I was like, ‘Oh, no, oh, no’. But aside from that, I was maybe naive enough to think that no matter what, a great story is going to make it and I didn’t realise how close we came to not making it until a year or two down the road.”
Asher says the concept of Ghosts puts limitations on the show as the spooks can’t leave the house or its ground.
“But it also gives you 1,000 years of history that you can go back on because they’ve been stuck here for this long,” he said.
“You guys (Brits) have it even further because you have a caveman character. But for us, it’s a Viking who dates you back to about 1,000 years ago.
“So what happened? What was it like before there was even a house? So while we can’t go to different locations, we can go back into the history of these people.”
The actors playing the ghosts also have to watch that they don’t change their appearance — as, obviously, ghosts stay in the same state as when they died.
“I don’t know that I ever truly appreciated the wonders of moisturiser until I got this show,” he joked. “I’m learning that that’s very important because we have to be stuck in time.
“Our writers started to make fun of me a little bit this year because I’ve been working out and trying to stay in shape. And sometimes I shoot coming straight from the gym and my legs are a little bigger than they usually are.
“So I’ve noticed the writers starting to make fun of the size of my legs. But, yeah, there’s a consistency that that needs to occur for sure.”
Most of the British cast had worked together before Ghosts as part of Horrible Histories, but how did the American cast bond?
“I think we did it through mutual suffering as we all sat in the pandemic wondering if our lives and career would potentially be made by this brilliant thing that we were signed on to do,” Asher said.
But when Covid broke out, the cast had weekly Zoom catch-ups.
“We had this thing of getting to know each other and getting to worry together,” he said.
“And I think that was a big part of it. I also think shooting in a foreign country, being in Montreal and especially with Covid, where you’re kind of bubbled together, we’re lucky that it’s a really good group of people.
“I think the smartest choice that our showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman made was the quality of people they hired in the cast, because we all really get along and we hang out with each other.
“CBS is generous enough to invite me to the SuperBowl here in two weeks, and the first person I’m calling to take with me is Brandon, who plays Isaac.
“So we’re all friends and we all hang out and that is a huge benefit, especially when you get scripts at the last second.
“You have like 15 minutes to figure it out. Being able to rely on each other and play, I think it’s the engine of the show and the BBC version obviously set the tone for that because the way they play off each other is kind of what we aspire to.”
One of Asher’s favourite storylines in the first season is when Hetty thought she had a butler when she was a child but it turns out if was Thor’s ghost.
“As a child she could see him because sometimes kids can see the ghosts,” Asher said. “And so it’s just a wonderful thing that deepens the relationship.”
When the second season finishes in a few weeks, it will mean there would have been 40 episodes of the American version, while the UK one has been running for four series and has only reached 27 episodes.
“It’s very much like a machine built to churn these things out and then it becomes a race to make your schedule,” Asher told me, “but it also make them as unique, creative and exciting as possible.
“The good news again is the BBC concept is so brilliant that there are a lot of possibilities and things that you can do.”
Asher also said people yearn to discover their heritage, but “if you actually got to sit down and have lunch with your great-great-great grandfather, it might be fun for a few minutes, until they start talking, because they’re going to have some points of view that you’re going to be like, ‘Oh, okay, wow’.
“At its core, it’s a lightweight comedy. I’m not wearing pants. There’s a Viking, there’s a hippie. We’re little children in a clown car, but, at the same time, most of us are dead and one of us is living and we’re bridging the unbridgeable gap.”
One of the hardest things for the living characters is not reacting when the ghosts speak as they cannot see them.
But when there are eight ghosts shouting at the same time, it can be hard for actors like Utkarsh.
Asher explained: “The thing you were taught as an actor is to be responsive, is to listen and respond and react. And that’s where authenticity comes from.
“So on our show, we’re taking the core value of an actor and saying, ‘Great, you know, that thing that you learned and spent eight years trying to perfect. Don’t do that. Don’t bring that here’.
“We are very lucky that we have incredible guest stars, chief among them Betsy Sudano (cholera victim Nancy) and John Hartman (British Revolutionary Guard Nigel Chessum), who come in.
“The hardest job you can have on a television show is being a guest star or co-star, because you’re essentially coming in to someone else’s dinner party and there’s no time for anyone to get to know you as we’re moving quickly.
“But you also have to crack like eight jokes and get all of us to laugh.
“And to be able to come in and connect with all of us, keep the ball in the air and then also not look at us is a very hard thing to do.
“I have to give a shout out to Rose McIver. It can be hard to to catch this, but we shoot everything twice.
“We do it with the ghosts and then without the ghosts. So she has to play a scene with eight people in it. And then those eight people leave and she has to play the exact same scene with the exact same eye-lines and listening to the things but to air.
“So we’re off in another room shouting out our lines.
“And then, of course, Utkarsh’s ability to ignore people and just focus on one. It’s really hard. And those guys provide us with the backbone of the show.”
As a fan of American football team Jacksonville Jaguars, Asher says he gets recognised a lot in Jacksonville.
He said that in New York, if he goes to a bar or restaurant, people will ask if he is Trevor and they’ll make “lots of pants jokes, like, ‘I didn’t recognise you with your pants’.
“I find all that to be a lot of fun and lovely. Because, again, at the end of the day, as an actor, you’re just trying to make something that people will watch and connect to.
“And that will affect someone else, the way that movies or television or theatre has affected you.
“And so the idea that anyone would see something and have it make enough of an impact that it would sit with them for a few days, and they would remember something is like the greatest gift. So I find all that stuff to be very charming.”
Asher said his parents never interfered with his choice of career.
He said: “I don’t know if this is a traditional Jewish thing or not. My dad was a doctor and then started a few businesses, all in the medical world. And my mom was a fashion designer. She was the president and vice-president of women’s wear for Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein.
“And both of them were like, ‘We don’t care what you do, do something that you love. But if you want to pick what you’re gonna do, you better bust your ass, and chase it with every fibre of your being’.
“And so that level of determination and tenacity, I got a lot from my parents, and you need it as an actor, because things looked so bleak for me for so long.
“And I went to Columbia University (from where he graduated with a degree in film and English), and so I was surrounded by people who are so successful and working in these great jobs, and I was unemployed.”
While looking for acting jobs, Asher worked as a substitute teacher.
“I was just trying to get by, and I found a love,” he said. “And I found a lot of a skillset through teaching that helped me in my acting.
“But I definitely felt a lot of failure because I didn’t go to school to be a teacher, I studied and dedicated all the time to be an actor.”
Despite his new-found success, Asher, who also has an MFA from the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco, still lectures at Hunter College in New York City.
He also taught inmates acting at the notorious Rikers Island prison.
Asher said he was raised “in a very non-Jewish area where being Jewish was certainly considered weird”.
He explained: “I would get stuff carved in my locker and stuff. It was a very WASPy area in rural New Jersey. So not the most Jewish-friendly area.
“But my parents were Jewish and they were adamant that that was part of my identity.
“Being surrounded by a kind of WASPy community gave me a sense of ‘Well, I don’t want to be that. I want to lean into being Jewish. I love that I’m not what these people are because of the way they treated me’.
“And so we went to services every Saturday. We went to an Orthodox kind of Conservative synagogue. I don’t eat pork or any of that stuff. I’m certainly not Orthodox in my lifestyle, but I grew up doing an Orthodox service.
“We would go away every year for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and do the eight-hour services and the marathons and stuff like that; and keep Passover, and it’s very much part of my identity.”
He added: “I think the greatest gift it’s given me is that it is an identity. It gives you a sense of history and a sense of place and a sense of purpose.
“I think that connection is to history, more than anything else, and I guess the spirituality.”
He told me: “I was so excited to have this interview because to have any kind of publication that speaks to a Jewish audience is always very meaningful to me.
“It’s just great to have a connection to my own culture, and to feel like I’m doing something that is resonating with that community.”
