Ghosts: Rebecca Wisocky Reveals Hetty’s Ghost Power is Coming Soon [Interview]

Earlier on in Season 4 of Ghosts, Hetty can be heard declaring: “In this most urgent moment of need, my heretofore dormant ghost power will emerge!” It did not, in fact, emerge for the Gilded Age ghost, who is the only one without a power in the core ensemble.

However, I recently spoke with Rebecca Wisocky about her guest role on The Sex Lives of College Girls and her upcoming arc on Ghosts as Hetty Woodstone — an arc the actress had a juicy plot point to tease.

“We will learn Hetty’s ghost power this season,” she confirmed.

After we thoroughly gushed over how exciting that reveal will be and I stopped fist-pumping the air with delight, she added that the writers “surprised” her with this storyline. “You’re going to learn a few things about her backstory that will shock.”

On that exciting note, we delved further into Hetty’s backstory and what flashbacks Wisocky would love to explore in future outings. “There are two things that are really evocative and exciting to me that I hope we get to at some point,” she stated.

“One is the year-long period after Hetty first died, in which Sas, Thorfinn, and Isaac were trapped in the dirt so she wouldn’t have met them. She was alone — unless she met the basement ghosts — and without anyone to guide her in this afterlife experience. For an entire year, she watched her son move on, watched her house transform.”

“The other thing that I’m interested in is Hetty’s relationship with her mother. Really, all we know is that she was involuntarily institutionalized by her father. I would love to see that relationship and learn more about her mustachio sister, Margaret, too.”

“There are 1000s of years of history to play with these characters. I think there’s a great deal many stories to tell for all of them.”

And one of those stories could hold the key to unlocking Hetty’s ghost power.

Even so, Hetty has already had wonderful storylines this season, including a Halloween yard sale that displayed many of the Robber baroness’ worldly treasures on the front lawn.

“There were a lot of cool, weird old paintings that were altered to vaguely look like me — but centuries ago, in a very disturbing manner. Our production designer, Zoë Sakellaropoulo, I sing her praises all the time, and it’s yet another example of just how detailed and artful the design is for our show. But the penguin leashes really were a high note for me.”

“I, of course, don’t endorse anything like this in real life, not that it would exist, but Elias has the pension for making making various animals into stools, which is just very on-brand for Elias Woodstone.”

Additionally, Wisocky loved working more with her castmate Román Zaragoza when Sas and Hetty teamed up this season to terrorize Pete.

“I’ve been pitching that I want to work more with Román Zaragoza from Season 1,” she explained.

“I love him so much, and that’s a really fun duo. They’re very childlike in their desires. They went crazy trying to get the butterscotch candy out of Carol’s purse. So they’re all about being ravenous and gossipy together — that’s a whole lot of fun. It was a new dynamic, and I hope we see that diabolical team up to no good again.”

While Hetty and Sas’ gossip sessions will go down in infamy, the Hetty-centric episode “Holes Are Bad” has also become an integral part of Ghosts’ legacy. So, we revisited what might just be one of the series’ best episodes to date.

“I’m really moved and grateful that they entrusted me to help tell that story,” Wisocky reminisced. “I’m very impressed with the way they involved me in conversations about how it would be revealed and how it would be articulated. Sophia Lear wrote that episode, and I had a lot of conversations with her, Joe Port, and Joe Wiseman, and also with a mental health professional.”

“It was risky to take that on, but we all felt very confident that the storyline could handle it, and that our show could deal with it with depth, humor and be disarming and also very comforting and surprising,” the actress recalled.

“We are very grateful that our fans responded to it in the way that they did. And I’m very moved with the stories that people have shared with me personally about depression and darkness and and the way suicide has touched their own families.”

As for whether this information about Hetty’s cause of death affected how Wisocky approached the character this season, she had a fantastic answer.

“Definitely, yes, but also, it doesn’t entirely define her either. There are so many things that go unsaid at any given moment, and that’s true of the human experience. It deepens the relationship that all these characters have with one another,” she expressed.

“But I obviously see certain plot points or exchanges through that lens now, in a way that I certainly did not before I was putting to that information as part of her story.”

Oh, and Tretty? Wisocky knows how down-bad we are for Trevor and Hetty’s romantic shenanigans.

“I get messages all the time from people trying to uncover ways between the line about a little glance that Hetty gave, or a little thing that Trevor did, or the fact that we’re touching one another at any given time,” she shared.

The actress added that Ghosts fans aren’t the only ones eager to dissect that relationship: “Asher Grodman and I talk a lot about the long game of that relationship and that dynamic.”

“I’m so thrilled and feel personally gratified that people love them together because there was initially pushback about that relationship. People came to realize that it was a lot more exciting and strange than a normal romance, and I think it will continue to evolve. They will have a lot more to say to one another this season and beyond, and it’ll never be a simple romance. It’s always going to be a lot more complicated and diabolical than that.”

“There’s going to be some things that Tretty shippers will enjoy this year, for sure,” Wisocky teased.

Female-forward, sex-positive characters are coming to the forefront of TV. The fact that Wisocky is guest-starring in Sex Lives of College Girls this season while playing a spirit with a recent sexual awakening on Ghosts delights the actress. 

“With over 100 years spanning them! Hetty is an early fledgling sex-positive feminist. Cut to 150 years later, and here are these girls tearing it up at Essex,” she remarked. “I love The Sex Lives of College Girls — I was a fan of that show. I think what Mindy Kaling and Justin Noble are doing with it is so funny and rumpus. And the young actors on that show are amazing.”

She first appears as Professor Dorfmann on The Sex Lives of College Girls Season 3 Episode 4 as a “very domineering, fickle, director and drama professor” with whom Wisocky had “a whole lot of fun” playing.

“I have a small arc, I did four episodes,” she revealed. “I work almost exclusively with one of the new series regulars, Gracie Lawrence, who is a powerhouse singer, actor, music, all around, awesome gal that I had so much fun torturing. Basically, my character puts her through the ringer in the theater program at Essex College for the duration of the season.”

“And I didn’t have to wear a corset for this one!”

—

Feature Image Credit: Sela Shiloni

Ghosts airs on Thursdays at 8:30c/7:30c on CBS. New episodes of The Sex Lives of College Girls stream Thursdays on Max.

Follow us on X and on Instagram!

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!