[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Ghosts Season 4, Episode 21 “Kyle.”]
Ghosts welcomed a new living with the power to see Woodstone’s spirits, as Superstore alum Ben Feldman dropped by to guest star as the new character Kyle.
Introduced in a moment outside of the mansion, Kyle met wandering arrow-skewered Pete (Richie Moriarty) while he collected food at a diner counter. Prompted by Pete to pay Woodstone a visit, Kyle stopped into the B&B and surprised Sam (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) with his supernatural ability.
Sam immediately connected with Kyle due to the fact that he related to her own experience of having to put up with the spirits constantly around her. It turned out that Kyle had gotten his ability after he was “Fabio’d,” a.k.a. hit in the face with a large bird while he rode a rollercoaster. Meanwhile, Jay was threatened by this newcomer’s arrival, as he noted the ease of connection Sam and Kyle had, especially after Sam hired Kyle to assist with ghost duties without consulting Jay.
Therefore, Jay was eager to find a fault in Kyle, and was pointed toward a previous conviction online in which Kyle had supposedly broken into someone’s house. When Kyle was confronted about this, he confessed he had broken into someone’s house and served six months for his crime, but that it was ghost-related as he tried retrieving a locket one ghost wanted sent to a relative.
Bertrand Calmeau / CBS
According to Kyle, the mission to help the ghost was successful, which made his time served behind bars worth it in his eyes. While this was a selfless act Kyle did for a ghost, that didn’t stop him from making things awkward when he attempted to kiss Sam, caught up in the emotions of meeting someone with his supernatural ability to see ghosts.
Ultimately, Kyle was sent packing by the end of the episode, but is there a chance he’d ever show his face at Woodstone again in the future? Feldman opens up about his performance below.
Were you a fan of Ghosts before you landed this guest role?
Ben Feldman: I had not seen Ghosts. I have a lot of friends who really like it and who’ve guested on it, and every person who comes back from [working on] that show says these people are incredible. This was the best time ever. You don’t always hear that. It’s a lot more fun to trash-talk a project and the people involved, but across the board, nobody has anything but incredible things to say about this cast. And so when this popped up, I was excited and the guy directing [Trent O’Donnell] is a close friend of mine, and we made a show together in Australia not long ago, so all signs pointed to me going and freezing my ass off in Montreal for a week.
You make quite an entrance during your “meat-cute” with Pete as he sniffs your plate at the diner. How did you feel about the introduction and the importance of Kyle’s presence in the series?
I’m glad I came to understand how important it is to have a second character with this particular skillset as time passed. I didn’t come in right out of the gate understanding what a big deal that was. I probably would’ve been a little more nervous, but I get it now. It’s a big deal. But being introduced to that show, the people were amazing. I knew a couple of people. I knew Utkarsh, and there are some writers on the show who I knew from Superstore, and Rose and one of my best friends are best friends. There are all these crazy connections. But the people I met were amazing. Richie is one of the funniest guys ever. And I could not have been luckier to have him as a [guide into the show].
Bertrand Calmeau / CBS
What was your reaction to learning Kyle’s backstory and how he got this “curse” of seeing ghosts after he was “Fabio’d”?
Well, first of all, I think it’s important that Fabio become a verb, and I’m glad the show introduced that into the lexicon. But yeah, I think there are two elements to this character. I think there’s this silly sort of superficial stuff. My first takeaway was that there was a real moment when he was talking about how hard it is to find a job. When I was reading that part of the script, I had never really stopped and thought about what a giant pain in the ass this would be to go through life like this, to move around through a world where you have to pretend that all these things aren’t around you or else you look like a total psychopath.
Nobody else understands what’s going on every single second of your life. And I realized this is pretty hard. I get why he’s annoyed by ghosts, why he calls it a curse. And then you’ve got the elements of he can’t hold down a relationship, and he’s jumping around a lot, but ultimately, he really has a deep level of compassion and empathy within him, which is how I connected to him. That’s why he puts up with all of this bulls**t. He does care about people. Ghosts may drive him nuts, but their relationships and who they are as humans matter to him. And I think he’s a really thoughtful guy who got the short end of an invisible ghost stick.
What dynamic with the ghosts would you have liked to explore more with Kyle?
They’re team players. Selfishly, as a human who shows up in Canada and shoots these scenes. Those [scenes with Hetty] were always the funniest. [Rebecca Wisocky]’s such a funny actress, and those lines are so ridiculous. Those were the ones where they’d call cut and we’d all break. But all of them are really fun. They’re all a party, both the characters and the incredible actors playing them.
Why is he so willing to take on work assisting the ghosts and their silly whims?
Taking on those jobs is ridiculous. And we learned in the [episode that Kyle] went to Dartmouth, he’s an intelligent guy, and taking that job was just another part of me realizing this guy’s life has to be absolute hell, that he has this massive secret that this is the only place he can go because he’s so excited to meet someone else for the first time ever on earth who has this ridiculous thing. I would do whatever job it took to get to that person, too. And I think a lot of that excitement carried over… I think he got so caught up. He got a little irresponsible with that feeling or whatever. But I get it. I would go there if I were him, too. What else are you going to do? Otherwise, you’re just keeping secrets all day, day long, and being stalked by weirdos in poutine stores.
Was Kyle thinking things through as he leaned in to kiss Sam?
I don’t think so. I think what you watched in this episode was a fully realized, one-sided meet-cute rom-com. She wasn’t feeling it. She might’ve had weird, conflicting, complicated responses to it, but that’s her thing for him. I think he watched a guy who genuinely wanted to meet someone else who has what’s going on with him. And then you watched him fall for her once he was in that situation, once he saw himself fully in real life, surrounded by all of this curse, and then the antidote to it.
Would you like to come back, or do you think Kyle’s too embarrassed to ever show his face at Woodstone again?
I think there’s an element of shamelessness to him. I don’t think he would [be too embarrassed], I mean, as soon as he was rejected from the kiss, he asked her for money. So I think if there’s one other person on earth who has what he has, being rejected in the house that she lives in with the love of her actual life, I think he can get over that if it means being able to come back into that world. And as far as I’m concerned, I’d love to go back. Those people are so much fun. So I hope they have [Kyle] back.
Ghosts, Season 4, Thursdays, 8:30/7:30c, CBS
