When there’s something strange in your neighborhood, don’t call these ghost busters. Adam Scott and Craig Robinson investigate X-Files cases in new promos for Ghosted. The guys have close encounters with Aliens, The Fly and Poltergeist but they run faster than Scooby Doo at the first sign of the paranormal.
The promos aren’t completely representative of the series, which promises to deliver real scares.
“The tone is something we’ve been wrestling with to find the big laughs and the scary moments,” executive producer Kevin Etten explained at a Fox Television Critics Association panel. “In the edit room, we actually cut some of the jokes to keep the tension. It’s something we wrestle with constantly with how silly versus how scary, but always want the truly scary.”
Series creator Tom Gormican credits the talented cast for being switch back and forth between comedy and drama.
“A show like this could quickly devolve into parody if not handled correctly,” Gormican said. “So one of the things that we’re doing is leaning on the actors both comic and dramatic. There’s a really solid mix of both of those things and that helps us sell the reality of the show. We want to feel like this is real danger and real people.”
Robinson honed his dramatic acting chops in Mr. Robot and Scott in Big Little Lies.
“It really served this show as well because we really wanted the relationship between Max and Leroy to feel real,” Scott said. “Going off and doing something like Big Little Lies was a great way to recharge batteries and make sure that we had those moments in here so that the comedy and the sci-fi and everything was hopefully working.”
Ghosted cast
Adam Scott and Craig Robinson are the comedic versions of X-Files’ agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, respectively. Robinson plays Leroy Wright, a cop fired from the LAPD after the death of his partner. Scott plays Max Allison, an astrophysicist who loses his job after claiming his wife was abducted by aliens just like Mulder’s sister. However; the authenticity of the abduction is up in the air.
“Max is a fun character because when we meet him in the pilot he’s somewhat a ruined man,” Scott described the role. “He was a astrophysicist and his belief in the paranormal made him a laughing stock. Now he’s working in a bookstore. Slowly in the pilot, he’s on his way to redemption, personally and professionally. We meet these guys at the bottom and will see how they’re crawling up through the Bureau. A lot of that for Max is about his missing wife. Was she actually abducted? We will find that out eventually. And for former cop Leroy, there are a lot of questions about why his partner was killed and why he was kicked out of the LAPD.”
Max and Leroy are recruited (read: kidnapped) by The Bureau Underground, an organization that believes these paranormal cases are part of a vast conspiracy. The bureau is headed by Captain Lafrey (Ally Walker) assisted by the team’s resident geeks Barry (Adeel Akhtar) and Annie (Amber Stevens West), who serves as Q for the secret agents.
“She builds crazy cool weapons in order to search and destroy all sort of paranormal creature things,” West said.
The actors could end up doing double duty, as in playing alternate versions of themselves.
“The multiverse plays into the overarching mythology of the show,” Gormican teased. “You don’t often see ‘mythology’ and ‘multiverse’ in a half-hour.”
Ghosted premieres October 1, Sunday 8:30PM on Fox.
