Ghosts uncovered a new corner of Woodstone Mansion in the latest installment, “The Vault,” as Sam (Rose McIver), Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), and the ghostly residents uncovered a secret vault underneath the estate.
Locked inside was Hetty’s (Rebecca Wisocky) husband and cousin Elias (played by Matt Walsh) who maintained his old-fashioned ideas about gender roles along with ruining the wedding Sam and Jay were hosting with his horny ghost power. Asserting her strength and fighting back against the obedience that Elias wanted, Hetty told him to go to hell. The results were explosive and game-changing for the series as the unpleasant man fell through a portal into the equivalent of hell.
Below, Wisocky opens up about Hetty’s potential new power, digging deeper into her character’s history, what’s next for the show, and more.
Rebecca Wisocky: It’s very exciting and we all feel like we’re in very good hands with this team of writers, with Joe Port and Joe Wiseman. I’ll be honest, I’m such a big fan that’s so in love with the rest of the cast, it’s a pleasure when all I have to do is just stand next to someone and look at them as cue. It’s all been a great big wonderful, wonderful surprise. As the rest of the season wears on, you’ll find out more and more about Hetty.
Hetty asserts her independence from her husband Elias in this episode. Was it nice getting to use the lessons she’s been learning from Sam and Alberta (Danielle Pinnock) all season?
Yeah, Hetty [always] takes a step forward and two steps back. She’s definitely a product and a prisoner of the social contracts and class contracts of her time and she clings to those things because in life they defined her, but in death they’re not necessary and they keep her from having rich relationships. So I think that’s very relatable. Everyone goes through that in their own way. How can you bend and change and still be yourself, and what even defines what that is? So Hetty in particular is a character of lots of contradictions and hypocrisies, which I always find tremendously fun to play, and is really the place where, for me at least, where comedy begins.
When Hetty tells Elias to go to hell, the floor literally opens a portal to hell into which he promptly falls through. Is she really convinced that this is her power? And what will this mean moving forward?
Well I think for a moment she’s terrified that it might be her power. For someone who is so concerned with appearances and behaving like a proper lady, it is the most grotesque, outsized, and powerful power one might be able to have. So I think she’s titillated and terrified, and then also overcome with power, the same way that she might twirl around and guzzle the booze when she possesses Jay’s body, or scarf up all of the Cheetos. She has a voracious appetite, and also a fear of being a carnal person. But I think she quickly realizes that of course that’s not her power. But she’ll probably continue to play with it and joke around about it.
The show is so funny with its dialogue. Is it difficult to keep a straight face when silly dialogue comes into play, like how going to heaven is called getting “sucked off,” or have you all become pros at hiding your laughs?
The full unedited blooper reel is going to be something else on this show, because not only are some of the things we have to say, with such conviction and with such a straight innocent face, so outrageous, but this is a company of naturally funny people, so we’re constantly breaking.
