Asher Grodman isn't twiddling his thumbs anymore. The budding star has led three seasons of CBS' hit show Ghosts.
One of CBS' signature sitcoms, the series is used to its traditional 22-episode model. However, the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes threw a wrench into the plans for Ghosts Season 3. The cast and crew had to pivot.
Luckily, they were able to do so. ClutchPoints spoke to Grodman during Ghosts' Season 3 run. He discussed the mad dash to film and edit the latest season of the show. Grodman also discussed the Jacksonville Jaguars' schedule release video that he directed and if he's interested in stepping into the director's chair on Ghosts.
Asher Grodman-Ghosts interview
ClutchPoints: Did you just wrap Ghosts Season 3? You just wrapped that?
Asher Grodman: Oh yes! Yeah, we gotta squeeze a short one in. Which we're very grateful to do, especially after the strike and this industry world being shut down. [I'm] very glad we were able to do a short little season.
CP: I did notice that you're a New York City guy. Could you maybe shoutout a favorite restaurant or spot in New York that people can check out?
AG: Wow. That's a tough question. Well, there's a place called Friend of a Farmer up on the Upper West Side that I just had brunch at, which is fantastic. There's another place down in Tribeca called Smith and Mills, which is one of my all-time favorite spots. It's got one of the coolest bathrooms you'll ever see. It's like having lunch in a submarine.
CP: I know you're a big sports guy and that you're a Jaguars fan. I am a little curious how that happened because being from New York, I'm a Giants fan, so I was a little confused reading that.
AG: The fandom started because growing up, I come from a family of Lions fans. Of course, I was being raised on Barry Sanders and Detroit, and I think my mother was starting to get concerned. [laughs] I was like seven years old. [and she] was starting to get concerned that my brother and I weren't going to have any friends because we were Lions fans and no one would want to hang out with us.
So she convinced my father to let us go free. And so I was basically told that I'm not allowed to be a Lions fans in order to save me from suffering. That was 1995, so the Jaguars were the new team on the block. And, I mean, to an 8 year old, that logo and those colors and it was like the coolest thing in the world. So I chose them from their birth.
An email exchange
And then the relationship has just brought me back to being that eight year old. I was in L.A. doing press for Ghosts after season one, and I got a message from them on Instagram, like, “Can we get your email?” And I was like, “Oh my god, yes.” And that then led to an email scheduling the phone call.
I spoke with one of their reps, Christy, who's wonderful, and she was basically like, “Are you really a Jaguars fan?” And I couldn't help myself. I just laid into her on how much I hated Urban Meyer and how they never should have hired him and [that] it was a massive mistake.
She was like, “Okay, okay, I get it. You are really a Jaguars fan.” She was just like, “We wanna bring you into the family and bring you down for games. What can we do for you?” And I was like, “What can I do for you?”
This is, again, my inner eight year old is just beaming right now. And they brought me down for an event in Jacksonville [at] the beginning of the 2023 season that was for Tony Boselli getting in the Hall of Fame. And so I'm suddenly in this room at this cocktail party with Tony Boselli and the local media and everything, and I've listened to these guys for my whole life, so I know all these guys in Jacksonville, these different reporters and personalities and everything.
I think I freaked everyone out by how much I knew, so I have a relationship with these guys [who] had no idea who I was. So, I just connected and connected with Boselli, [who] has become a good friend. And then relationships kind of formed in the organization cause I weirdly knew all these people.
Last year, around this time, I was down in Jacksonville [when] they hosted the Player's championship, part of the PGA Tour, I guess — I'm not a big golf guy. They invited me down, and some of the people approached me about the idea of doing the schedule release video, and trying to make a joke about the NFL being scripted.
And they were like, But this isn't our world, we don't know how to do this, and we don't know quite how to make it funny, and maybe you do. Ideas just started to flow, and I sent my ideas their way, and they liked it, and they did something that I've learned is very rare in this kind of bureaucratic, big business world, which is, they let me just have the reins.
All the different departments came together and worked with me and were so incredibly collaborative. And we got to make something that I think was a lot of fun and very special, and certainly a highlight for me.
I'm aware that if I were a Giants fan, no offense to you, I'd be worthless. I know what it is to walk up to MetLife and just feel like I can't even get in this place. It's so enormous. And in Jacksonville, I mean, the stadium's great, but there is almost like a small town mentality and it was a very welcoming vibe.
When it came to making this video, this rare humility that came with, We want to try to do this thing, we're not entirely sure how, do you want to work together? I defy you to find someone of the New York Giants with that kind of collaborative mindset.
So, ha ha! [laughs]
CP: The team's 30th anniversary's coming up, are you doing any sort of special video for that, perhaps?
AG: Oh, I don't know yet. I just finished Season 3 of this thing [Ghosts], so my capacity to take on anything outside of that has been limited. But, I don't know. It's very possible.
CP: Talking about Ghosts, I know you mentioned earlier that it was kind of a quick turnaround with the strike and everything, so could you talk to me a little bit about that? Because life in Hollywood picked up right after the strikes ended, and I'm sure that it was kind of a mad dash to the finish line, right?
AG: There's a whole spectrum of television out there right now. And a lot of what has happened in television, especially in the streaming world, which of course has faced a kind of business model reckoning with the strike and residuals and stuff like that.
But the business model is such that you're making television shows that, on a macro sense, operate like film sets. There's a big pre-production phase. Network television, which is the traditional form of where television grew, doesn't operate that way because you're making a lot more content.
Whereas a show like Netflix may have 10 episodes, eight episodes, whatever it is, we're doing 22. It is beyond human capacity to plan for 22 episodes and then shoot those 22 episodes and then have the time to turn around and start writing 22 more episodes for the next year.
So there's a run and gun thing that we do that's just baked into the medium that we're working in. I think that that was probably taken up to another notch because of the strike, where everyone, the whole business, and rightfully so, was put on hold because artists, performers were left out of the profit puzzle for so long since the advent of streaming and that new model.
Where we would normally do 22 episodes, we did 10. There was a little bit of a mad dash to get it written, though, our writers room and our showrunners, Joe Port and Joe Wiseman, did a fantastic job of coming up with a really creative Season 3.
For us, the biggest difference for us is that we're up in Montreal now shooting in the coldest months of the year. Whereas normally, we get a little bit of sunlight while we're up there. The biggest thing is something like a strike, as though we hadn't already learned this from the pandemic, which brought everything into question, [it] just continues to make you feel very grateful to be able to be part of something that people are watching and liking.
I've been in this business for 20 years and most of them I've been twiddling my thumbs, just begging for a day on a television show, much less a season of 10-22 episodes. So, the cast has got a great vibe. The material is a lot of fun. Our crew in Montreal is just fantastic.
CP: You mentioned that Season 3 is only 10 episodes this season, which, yeah, for a traditional sitcom is less than half than what you'd normally get is there any chance of the third season getting an extension?
AG: Listen, we haven't had an official announcement of what's gonna happen, but my understanding and my hopes is that the fourth season is gonna happen and if it does happen , which I certainly imagine it will, or at least I hope it will, [we] will be back to that 22 episode model.
I think the show is probably meant to operate with that many episodes. I think that's what the fanbase, which has been very, very patient as actors and artists across the spectrum have been sorting out with these studios, patient waiting for content.
CP: CBS has a lot of these landmark shows, whether it's sitcoms like Young Sheldon or there's more dramas like Blue Bloods. There's so many things on this slate. But what is it about Ghosts that really stands out about it?
AG: The thing that I hear and that has always seemed true for me is that this show doesn't always strike people as the thing that you would expect CBS to be doing. It's a very creative tone that I think is a bit of a departure, at least from what CBS has done, in the last couple decades where we're living in this fantasy world, and we're mixing people living and dead in different time periods.
There's a Revolutionary War soldier hanging out with a Viking, hanging out with a pant-less Wall Street trader. We're living in this fantastical thing that's also still hasthe kind of network television tropes where we're gonna hopefully make you laugh.
We're gonna hopefully be a little touching, warm you up a little bit, but this show I think is unique in that because of the concept, which is this BBC concept. We can kind of do things that most shows can't do — whereas you'd have a flashback in another show that would go back to see a character when they're younger, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, we can go back a thousand years because there's a thousand years of history of these eight main ghosts and how long they've been there.
We can go back in time and go forward that way, so there are these possibilities with the show and one of the things that I just had this conversation with one of our showrunners, Joe Wiseman, is that our goal with this show is to be doing the kinds of episodes that you would never be able to find on another show. The things that only we can do.
So I think there's a fresh take on that. But at the same time, there's this very universal thing of the show inherently is about connecting things that would never normally be connected. Even among the ghosts, there's Rose McIver's character who owns the house. She's living there and her ancestor is one of the ghosts, and so there's this connection that happens.
It's possible because of the concept of the show. And we always think that if we could go to the past and see what things were like, or connect to our ancestors, there'd be some kind of epic “getting back to our roots” thing. We kind of idolize the past in a way, but what some of the show does that's a lot of fun is the show that people in the past really had no idea what the hell they were doing and probably hadn't learned some lessons that we figured out today.
So we get to turn some of these common tropes in our day to day life on their head
CP: CBS loves a good spin-off, I mean, look at Young Sheldon. Could you ever see Trevor getting a spin-off, and if so, what would you really like to see in it?
AG: Something that I've talked about with our writers and about these characters is they all have their ghost powers, right? These little inane things that they can do. But they've also kind of all had these superpowers in life a little bit. Pete has this eternal optimism, Thor has this brute strength.
They all have these strong points of views. And Trevor certainly appears to have lived his life to the absolute fullest. And I think there is something about the juxtaposition of how enabled he was in his life and how capable he was in his life with how incapable he is right now in this afterlife.
And so I think something that would play upon the juxtaposition of those two things, I think would be a lot of fun. The nice thing about this is, you can play through time with the show. So what is it like when Trevor first arrived and first grasped with the reality of being dead? As everyone else around him is such an expert at it, and he has no idea what's happening or how this stuff works.
I always think that would be a lot of fun. The early dead years of Trevor.
CP: Has that been discussed at all? Is that just what you would pitch?
AG: I'm sure if you asked me tomorrow, I'd have a completely different pitch. But we played with it a little bit in the “Trevor's Pants” episode, and a few other people lightly touched on that transition, so there's been chatter,
There's not chatter of a spin-off or at least there is I haven't heard it yet. I think the thing that's fun about any kind of spin-off is grabbing these characters through history and then what different personalities are you going to trap?
That old thing of “If you could have a dinner with anyone from any time period, who would you invite to dinner?” The fun of that dinner is based on who's at the table. And so I think that any kind of spin-off for any of these characters has to be best served not just in having that character, but who that character is juxtaposed with.
CP: I know you directed the Jaguars video, but would you be interested in directing an episode of Ghosts? If so, what lessons did you learn from the Jaguars video that you'd carry on to your next directing gig?
AG: These are great questions. I would love to direct Ghosts, and I'll give another shoutout to our showrunners for creating the opportunity for me to learn and shadow some of our directors. I just shadowed Christine Gernon on our show, who's just brilliant. Trent O'Donnell has done a bunch of episodes with us, I've learned a lot from [him].
So I would love to direct the show, and I hope to in the future. It's a very unique show because there's such a strong visual language to it. Zoë Sakellaropoulo, who's created these gorgeous sets, has just taken it to a whole new level.
You'll see as the season unfolds, our locations, which are all sets that she built, are insane. And the work that our VFX team does, it's just such a rich show visually, so it's hard to not be on set and not want to direct one of these things, because it's so visually stimulating.
With the Jags video, I'm directing non-actors, you know? And so there's a thing of getting very clear on what it is that you want. And that's not about control — I think it's about relinquishing control.
If you know exactly what it is that you need at the core, then you kind of hammer down those things [but] you can follow their impulses and let that kind of collaborative energy in. Because if you know what the requirements are, and if you can hone in on the basics of what you need, you can allow for all of these other people to bring in different flavors and stuff.
And the more you try to control something, the less interesting it gets, if that makes any sense. So, coming into the Jags video knowing, Okay, I gotta hit this, and I gotta hit this, and I gotta hit this, but the rest of it, let's just see what happens, and let's be in this space where we can play.
Working with non-actors, that became very clear to me. And when you can work with people who can bring their own creative juices to it, that's a big thing. It's getting very clear on what it is you need so that you can allow for more and more collaboration. Because the more that you are relying or open to the ideas that other people bring in, the better the end product is going to be.
Also, it was a huge, validating confidence boost. Because I'm there — Trent, who I mentioned, was there with me, kind of keeping an eye on me because it's hard to write, direct, and be in a thing all at once. He's been a wonderful mentor for me.
That experience doing the Jags video and the response to that was a huge confidence boost, and just being able to work those muscles. And we shot that whole thing in a day and a half, and the turnaround was real fast, so we basically made it at the pace of it being a network television episode.
It was just a really rewarding experience and validating experience.
Ghosts is airing on CBS now.
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