Comic-Con 2017 Interview: Craig Robinson, Adam Scott and Ally Walker Talk GHOSTED

Set to premiere later this fall on FOX is Ghosted, a paranormal-infused comedy which co-stars Craig Robinson and Adam Scott as a pair of recruits for an organization tasked with investigating unknown phenomena in the Los Angeles area. While in San Diego for this year’s Comic-Con, Daily Dead had the opportunity to speak with both Scott and Robinson, as well as with their other Ghosted co-star Ally Walker, about their involvement in the upcoming show, what we can expect from their characters, and much more.

Ghosted arrives on FOX on Sunday, October 1st (just in time for the Halloween season).

Ally, what was the appeal to you coming into this show? Was it your character? Or maybe the actors you’d be working with?

Ally Walker: It was a really fresh idea. It's a simple idea, but I've never seen it before and I know Adam, from Tell Me You Love Me too, which we did on HBO 10 years ago, and I love Adam. I think he's brilliant and Craig's one of the funniest guys I have ever seen. I even remember Craig on Friends. He's a genius. I was telling him, "You know I saw you on Friends?"  And he was like, "Oh my God" (laughs). But, being a part of just good writing and comedy that felt so fresh to me, that was something I hadn't done in a long time.

And actually, I know very little about my character so far. But what I do know is that I run this underground bureau, which is like a NASA-type of organization, and we investigate the paranormal. I'm a single mom and I'm very tough too. I'm usually on the straight and narrow, keeping these guys on point. But it's really fun.

Craig and Adam, you guys have both have been a part of different genre projects before, and I'm curious, was there something that specifically caught your interest when you were considering coming on board this project?

Craig Robinson: (Executive Producer) Tom Gormican wrote a treatment, and we have the same agency, so it got passed over to me. The way he wrote it, it had some specific things in there, like “badass black dude with a badass Afro” and I was like, "Oh, yeah" (laughs). It was also hilarious and so we took it to Adam, and then Adam looked at it and he thought-

Adam Scott: -Yes.

Craig Robinson: With the paranormal angle, and the friendship and the heart in it, I thought if we could pull this off, it could be something special. I met with Tom at Fette Sau for barbecue in New York and we were like, "Okay, let's do this."

Adam Scott: For me, action comedies always been my thing. I grew up in the '80s so Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, Ghostbusters, or Midnight Run – these are my favorite movies. So I was thinking of it in terms of action comedy, and then really grounded characters with a big heart. That's what I was thinking.

Then, the genre stuff was just a cherry on top. That's really fun, to throw that into a world that feels grounded and real, where you throw something insane on top of just everyday life. It's a matter of being able to have these characters that feel real, reacting to all this stuff that's totally bonkers. We've been saying that the quick way of describing it is if Stranger Things and Midnight Run had a baby - that's Ghosted. And for me, that baby would be my favorite baby (laughs).

Can you tell us what was it about the characters of Max and Leroy that leads to them being chosen for this bureau then?

Craig Robinson: In the pilot, one of the agents from bureau disappears. Before his disappears, he says, "If anything happens to me, contact Max Jennifer and Leroy Wright," because we were the best in our fields that we got dissociated from before this show starts. I was a great detective and Adam was great astrophysicist, so it was about combining these two powers to help out the bureau.

Adam Scott: And after the pilot, there are some open questions as to why exactly it's these two people that he wanted. Why exactly are these two guys being implanted and brought into this world? It may be more than just they excelled in their fields before they were kind of ruined. I think that's something that could be answered later on too, as the show progresses.

You mentioned Midnight Run and Stranger Things – is that the tone of the show then?

Ally Walker: I see it as a cross between Ghostbusters and The X-Files. It's a really interesting hybrid and I've really enjoyed kind of watching that because it has similar qualities from both shows. It's a tough thing to do to make someone scared and to make someone laugh in the same show, but I think Ghosted accomplishes that.

Adam Scott: Yeah. When we were editing the pilot, the thing we found ourselves doing more and more was pulling jokes out, especially during an action sequence or sequence where there are some scares. There's a fine line there, where you can tip over into the realm of the silly, and then the scares won't be scary or the stakes of someone being chased are diminished. We were just finding the balance there, especially when it was being cut together. It all feels very real -

Craig Robinson: - all in the name of reality.