Brandon Scott Jones interview: ‘Ghosts’
“You spend all of this time building these relationships off camera with these people,” reveals Brandon Scott Jones about being in the “Ghosts” ensemble. For our recent webchat he continues, “There are going to be days when you walk off set and go, ‘God, did I really shit the bed in that scene?’ I feel that pressure is gone because, when I’m not doing what I want to be doing, they are lifting me up.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
The CBS sitcom is a about a couple who inherit a property haunted by people who have died there over the years. The eclectic group of ghouls includes a Viking, hippie, 80s stockbroker and a native American. Jones plays Captain Isaac Higgintoot, a revolutionary officer who died of dysentery.
In the just aired second season finale, Higgintoot proposes to British officer ghost Nigel (John Hartman). While the two were enemy combatants before death, a romance has developed between the two in the afterlife. Jones reveals, “That scene was a last-minute surprise to me, John and our director. We got it together very quickly. I had to try and find the reason. Isaac is struggling with co-habitating. The fact he goes all the way to proposal is really funny to me. He’s over course corrected. In his brain, as the revolutionary war era man, the concept of living together means marriage. That’s a great example of where old timey values and current situation intersect.”
Jones has an extensive background in improv, having come up through the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theatre. In “Ghosts,” the actor explains how this experience helps. He says, “In improv comedy one of the things you learn at the very very beginning is trying to make others look good and put your trust in others.”
He later adds, “Improv is more a tool than it is for just saying something funny. If we improvise something on camera, most of the time it’s not gonna make it. But it allows you as a performer to discover a new way of going about something, or a new way of feeling about something or finding a new fun dynamic between two characters. And going back to trust. Having each other’s backs. I know when I’m there they all have mine and I hope they feel I have theirs.”
