There’s a second in Thursday evening’s Christmas-themed “Ghosts” two-parter the place the physique of Rose McIver’s character, Sam, is all of a sudden inhabited by sassy downstairs cholera spirit Nancy (Betsy Sodaro). “Ghosts” requires its stars to take part in all kinds of hijinks on a weekly foundation — and on this case, McIver was tasked with imitating Sodaro as Nancy.

“I am keen on Betsy a lot,” McIver tells Selection. “I am keen on her as an individual, as a performer. I’m an enormous fan. So I felt very honored that I received to channel a bit of Nancy, and he or she was predictably so beneficiant to work with.”

McIver says Sodaro helped her put together by sharing movies to show how you can play Nancy as a loud-mouthed, inappropriate, over-the-top ghost. “She put these movies down of her saying her dialog and exhibiting me how she would behave,” McIver says. “She was like, ‘I really feel like I’m auditioning to play myself. This doesn’t really feel fairly proper,’ After which on set, she was in a position to go behind the screens and throw some concepts out as properly. It was an awesome character to get to step into. She constructed one thing so humorous and so particular that there have been good tangible issues to hold my work on.”

In “A Very Arondekar Christmas” components 1 and a pair of, Jay’s mother and father Mahesh (Bernard White) and Champa (Sakina Jaffrey) go to the B&B for the primary time, and so they’re not impressed. Sam has eternally been determined to win Champa’s respect by, on the very least, being added to the household group textual content. When Nancy climbs into Sam’s physique, it looks like a surefire catastrophe — however to the shock of everybody, Champa truly begins to bond together with her.

“Of all of the characters to be possessed by, to have Nancy if you’re attempting to make an excellent impression in your in legal guidelines, is definitely a cube roll,” McIver says.

And certainly, Nancy-as-Sam doesn’t win Champa over for lengthy, as her off-putting actions are nonetheless, properly, off-putting. However by the tip of the episodes, the true Sam has managed to earn some new respect from Champa, and a spot within the textual content chain.

“That’s one of the best Christmas current she might ever have requested for,” McIver says. “I imply, Sakina is unbelievable. She’s so humorous and so easy and straightforward and simply the right alternative for Champa. You’ll be able to utterly see why Sam desires desperately to be favored by her. There was a bit of little bit of life imitating artwork happening set, as I’m a giant fan of Sakina as properly.”

“A Very Arondekar Christmas” can be a landmark second for Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), who has his personal out-of-body expertise when Pete (Richie Moriarty) takes it over. Jay is thrown out of his physique utterly, placing him quickly in ghost-land — the place he will get to work together with all the present’s ghosts for the primary time.

“It’s enormous,” McIver says. “I’m so comfortable that we received to this place, and it was a very imaginative means for them to seek out it. And it was a technical feat. Utkarsh and Richie Eager, who directed us, did a very unbelievable job, and Richie Moriarty at navigating the three completely different variations of Jay, and the precise practicality of capturing these on set. The place you could have all these stand ins and VFX, it was actually spectacular.

“And story clever, to have these people who Jay has constructed a relationship with sight unseen for the previous couple of years, lastly culminate on this extremely thrilling second the place he’s in a position to see how related they’re to what he’s anticipated, the place the variations are and hug them,” she provides. “Now he’s one step forward of Sam, in that he’s been in a position to have bodily contact with the ghosts and he or she hasn’t. It appears like an actual landmark episode for us as a collection.”

Talking of landmark moments, McIver has simply directed her first-ever episode of tv, which is developing this season on “Ghosts.” Her episode (the thirteenth of Season 4) airs someday later this winter, and focuses on Pete’s backstory.

“I’ll all the time be eternally grateful that this present has now given me my first alternative to direct in tv,” she says. “It’s been one thing I had actually wished to do and that I’m actually pleased with. I’ve been bitten by the bug, so to talk. It’s all I wish to do and it’s exhausting shifting again out of the director’s seat. I had a good time.”

McIver says it helped that “Ghosts” is now a well-oiled machine, and he or she is so aware of the present, its tone and its characters. “It’s an unbelievable privilege to have spent 4 years with individuals you develop a shorthand, and you actually perceive individuals’s strengths and weaknesses,” she says. “It lets you quick observe previous a number of the pleasantries, and I used to be in a position to lower to the chase. Everybody was actually affected person and supportive, and form of indulged my artistic decisions. I hopefully haven’t tanked it so badly.”

McIver says she’s been laying the groundwork to direct for a while; when she starred on The CW’s “iZombie,” she even took the Warner Bros. directing workshop.

“And now, to have had that chance like a canine with a bone, I don’t wish to let it go,” she says. “We’ll see how simple or troublesome that path goes ahead, however I definitely have had an awesome leaping off level. And really grateful to CBS and the present the showrunners, everyone for letting me do that.”