MassMutual’s first female CFO is retiring. Her successor is a woman too

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details from the first five episodes of Ghosts Season 4.
Four seasons in and the ghosts at Woodstone Mansion are still finding new shenanigans to get themselves into.
Thursday’s episode of CBS‘ Ghosts saw Alberta (Danielle Pinnock) help Sam (Rose McIver) prepare to audition for a local musical, overcoming her stage fright and fulfilling a decades-long dream of being front and center on stage. All the while, Trevor (Asher Grodman) and Sasappis (Román Zaragoza) are trying to make a move on one of the women in the theatre troupe, which doesn’t go so well considering, well, they’re dead.
But, Sas finds a glimmer of hope when he encounters the woman in Jay’s (Utkarsh Ambudkar) dream and convinces himself that he’s found a loophole. That is, until he starts talking about how much they have in common, and Trevor and Pete (Richie Moriarty) realize Sas isn’t dating a new woman after all. He’s really just dating Jay.
Watch on Deadline
In the interview below, Grodman spoke with Deadline about Trevor’s involvement in Sas’ somewhat embarrassing revelation and reflected on Season 4 thus far, which has already included a big arc for Trevor, who learned in Episode 4 that despite his death, he still managed to become quite a bigwig in the finance world.
DEADLINE: What have you been enjoying most about the season so far?
ASHER GRODMAN: Patience was a lot of fun. Any time that we can kind of delve into the American history of it all is always fun. It was kind of fun to have a villain for a few weeks. “The Work Retreat” [Episode 4] was really exciting and fun to have those three storylines all merging and affecting each other, between the Trevor’s job, and Isaac and his newfound ‘do and, of course, the whole rumor thing. I just thought the episode came out really well. I thought Katie Locke O’Brien, who directed it, just hit it out of the park, and the writers did a great job. From just a selfish Trevor standpoint, it’s a lot of fun. He gets to go on quite a journey. Usually a lot of what we’re doing is the ensemble work, and trying to hit a joke and trying to make a scene pop. But it was fun to be able to track that huge arc that he has. It gets to go dark, and it gets to go gleeful, and it gets to be funny, and it’s just a really creative premise.
DEADLINE: What did you make of the reveal that Trevor is kind of a big deal in the finance world?
GRODMAN: Speaking from the Trevor point of view, there’s something kind of dream-like about it, where I feel like we all hope and dream that we leave some kind of impact behind, but because of the nature of our show, these ghosts are forever very, very small and insignificant, just trapped in this one place and have no effect on the world. For someone like Trevor, who is, I think, more so than any ghost, because he’s the most recently dead, been desperately trying to connect to the living world as much as possible, whether it’s the dating apps or reaching out to his brother or his parents … for someone in that position who’s living this fairly tiny existence in the afterlife, and who is so desperate to contact and to be part of the world he left behind, I think this was a really profound and exciting experience. It’s weird all the stuff that he probably would have prioritized in life is not the stuff that had an impact.
DEADLINE: I hope it remains a recurring joke that Trevor has a remote job, because I can only imagine the shenanigans to come from that.
GRODMAN: I hope so too. It’s such a fun idea. Lord knows, Sam and Jay could use some money. So it would be fun to have this ghost who’s walking around with a ton of cash. I think the show, fundamentally, has a lot of fun with trying to bridge boundaries [between] the living and the dead, and then different time periods and all that. So the idea that he is off in a corner using all his might to keep up his day job is a very funny concept. I’d love to keep exploring it.
DEADLINE: I love that he calls Sam and Jay “mom and dad.” I know he sweetened the deal with his bonus, but what do you think it means to him that the two of them are willing to go to such lengths for him?
GRODMAN: I love that mom and dad and the multiple crazy kids dynamic, because there is something about these ghosts that feels like they’re all children in their parents’ house who do not have the agency yet to live out in the real world, so they’re just causing mayhem. So I think that dynamic is an accurate reflection of what we’re playing with. I can see a world where someone would be like, “Maybe Sam needs some help .. .to have some boundaries,” but at the same time, I’m gonna get a touch deep here: I think we all have this loneliness that walks around with us, and the idea of — it’s almost like the imaginary friend thing, and the idea of having different personalities and sides of us that exists within us. I think Ghosts finds a sense of family through a sense of loneliness, if that makes any sense, because it is all these very disparate personalities. So the idea that they would just so fully commit to helping one of these ghosts out, I think there’s a level of of intimacy and family. It’s the thrill of what could happen. And poor Jay goes along with it. So, really, the big question is, what is Jay’s point of view in all of it? Because he’s got the least to gain. Well, he does have the money, but he doesn’t get to experience, the journey. I guess in this one, he kind of did, right? He got to walk a day in Trevor’s shoes.
DEADLINE: I agree with your point about the series being a physical representation of what it means to feel seen.
GRODMAN: It’s almost like a physical manifestation of your internal reality, where you would have these different personalities who kind of live inside of you, but then having them outside of you, and being able to see the world … It’s kind of like this fun, vivid playground. Obviously, it’s not all in Sam’s head, but I think there’s a found family thing to it that is really thrilling, and you would go to a lot of lengths to help them out.
DEADLINE: Speaking of Jay, what did you make of the plot line in this episode where Sas sort of develops a crush on him, via this woman in his dream?
GRODMAN: Well, I guess, picking up on the fact that we’re all very deeply connected to each other, this falls right into that world. It’s so fun. What was really fun about it is the almost like the middle school or the high school vibe to it, like him coming to his friends, like, “Here’s what I’m going through. I have this crush on this girl,” and then kind of helping him find that perspective. Roman does such an amazing job with the storyline … there are no boundaries anymore. So this is definitely a way that we’ve crossed, maybe one of the final walls that were up. All I can say for poor Jay.
DEADLINE: When Trevor finally points out that Sas has a crush on Jay, Pete says he’s a little jealous. But I don’t think Trevor actually ever says how he feels about that situation. Do you have thoughts?
GRODMAN: I think that Trevor is constantly seeking fun, and so for him, it’s such a thrill, just the novelty of what’s happening, having this deep, deep friendship-crush on Jay. I think it probably annoys Trevor a little bit, but the the idea that Sas had been turned around, and the unwittingly dating him, my God. What friend wouldn’t enjoy just a little bit the suffering of that?
DEADLINE: At first, he seems a little jealous that Sas might be getting to connect with this woman who they both had a crush on. Is the reality a bit vindicating for him?
GRODMAN: Very true, very true. I think there’s a fun dynamic with Sas where he’s obviously been around so much longer than Trevor, but there is a little brother quality to it. So I’m sure there was a little bit of a jealousy, like at the moment that he thought, “How did you pull that off?” But yeah, the reversal of that because Trevor would not be dating Jay. But walking into someone’s dream would certainly be Trevor’s alley.
DEADLINE: So, what can you tease about these next few upcoming episodes, especially the Christmas episode?
GRODMAN: So you know, there’s a double possession, right? That’s not news. I can tell you that there’s some performances in that double possession episode that are just off the charts, and I cannot wait for people to see see them. I’ll say that. Next week has a really sweet storyline that’s kind of this reflection on pets, which I really loved. What else? We meet Jay’s family at Christmas.
[Jay seeing ghosts] is gonna be a lot of fun, especially because he understands, like a sliver of us, and then the juxtaposition between his expectations and reality, I think they do a really good job with and it’s fun to play with, so I can tease that as well.
DEADLINE: Any more Trevor backstory?
There is some fun Trevor backstory in Episode 6. Trevor has this kind of unique thing where he often feels like the least likely guy to get sweetness from, if that makes any sense, which then makes him kind of, I guess, fun to get some sweetness from. So we’re going to get a little bit of that in Episode 6 … There’s so much that I want to tell you, but I can’t.