'Ghosts': Brandon Scott Jones on Isaac Confronting His Past and Nigel Romance (Exclusive)
Ghosts gets ready for the holidays at Woodstone mansion with a two-part Christmas episode, which can only mean skeletons -- or in this case, ghosts -- of the past are about to resurface. For Isaac (Brandon Scott Jones), the once-closeted Revolutionary War captain who's been dancing around his feelings for a fellow ghost, Redcoat officer Nigel (guest star John Hartman), he will be forced to face his demons if he hopes to progress forward with their relationship.
The one-hour holiday episode, titled "The Christmas Spirit" (and winks at the feel-good Christmas movies dominating this time of year), finds Isaac looking back on the events of his past life and marriage to wife Beatrice (guest star Hillary Anne Matthews), after an awkward encounter with Nigel under mistletoe causes him to question whether he's on the right path to being his true self. The two-parter also explores Isaac's uncertainty as he confronts his life as a closeted soldier during the war and whether he's able to move on from it.
"It's continuing this journey of self-acceptance for him, where he's realizing and finally coming clean about what his actual status was in this world when he was alive and what the status he's tried to project to the ghosts. And I think reconciling those two things," Jones, who plays Isaac, tells ET in previewing the hour. "On the personal relationship side of things, he's trying to nurture whatever this relationship is with Nigel in the best way he possibly can, but he also has a lot of personal humps to get over."
"I think he feels a lot of guilt around how he maybe behaved in his life and how he's behaving now, and how he doesn't want one version of himself to cancel out the other. But he also has to know that he has to deal with those things," the actor continues. "It's this sort of crisis that he's constantly in of just saying, 'Well, who am I if I'm not the thing I said I was?' And once he gets to unpack that a little bit, I think he starts to realize and appreciate the people around him and he can take steps forward to actually have a relationship."
The episodes flash back to Isaac's days prior to his death, where it becomes clear his marriage to his wife is more of a business agreement as she acknowledges several times that she knows he's gay -- even if he hadn't come to terms with it yet. As Jones noted, for Isaac to feel comfortable enough if he decides to take a romantic leap forward with Nigel, he has to work through his "unfinished business" in his past life.
"He had some unfinished business personally with the relationship he had with his wife when he was alive. He has to let that go or find some sort of -- not closure, because I still think there's a lot more to explore there with her -- but have some contextualized understanding of what that relationship actually was," the actor teases. "And does it matter? Even if it was 250 years ago, it still feels so fresh in his mind in a way and I think once he can release that, he might be able to take another step forward. There's a lot more to still release, but I think this one thing that he's got to get over is going to help his relationship with Nigel."
"I think he's constantly learning these lessons to remind him that, like, 'Oh, all this energy you spent trying to be somebody you're not, really who was that for? Because it meant nothing in the long run,'" Jones adds.
Though the reality behind Isaac's marriage to Beatrice sheds light on his current romantic dilemma with Nigel, Jones shared that the revelations that surface surrounding the captain's past relationship offer context as to why he's been conflicted about his self-identity for more than two centuries.
"The interesting thing there is him understanding that you could still have a meaningful relationship that you could call a marriage, even if it doesn't necessarily check all the boxes of what you thought it could be," he says. "Whether she accepted him without ever talking about it or not, it's the concept that there's still value in the experience of having relationships with somebody. And that's something I wanted to say."
"I'm far more interested in the version of Isaac that had a meaningful relationship with his wife than the version that was cold and distant," Jones adds. "I think ultimately maybe they were a great pair. Maybe they were just an excellent couple that lit up all these parties, and maybe they were this but because he felt like he was hiding something from her, he always felt like he duped her out of having a good life. He's a character that's very much stuck in the past. Once he starts to deal with things, then they become a little bit more clear."
Jones expressed interest in continuing to explore Isaac's pre-death life with Beatrice. At the moment, the Christmas episodes are all that's been filmed with regard to that specific partnership, he said.
"It's definitely something I would like to see," Jones acknowledges. "He's maybe coming from an era where that type of relationship was defined very richly and very specifically and had a lot of weight behind it. To then explore something that is a little bit more modern or at least a more contemporary understanding of what a relationship can be, to see that lens from today put back on it would be such a fascinating storyline. It would be a fascinating tidbit or a nugget of information, like, 'Oh no, they were best friends. They absolutely did love each other.' But the fact that he always felt guilty that he didn't love her the way that he felt that she should have or everyone else felt he should have loved her, is an interesting thing."
Ghosts isn't afraid to wink at the zeitgeist, and its Christmas episode is no different as it pays homage to the holiday films rerunning at all hours of the day during the month of December. And Isaac may finally have his own romantic Hallmark movie moment in Thursday's hour. "I watch all those Christmas movies, so there's a deep catharsis in getting a chance to do something like that," Jones hints.
The upcoming hour also drops a shocking bombshell involving two very surprising characters (and also sees Sam being hilariously possessed by Viking Thorfinn). Without getting into spoiler territory, Jones shared the reveal is a doozy and was a major shock to the cast members.
"We were all surprised!" the actor says of the episode-ending moment. "I remember it was a pretty cold table read, so we were kind of reading it for the first time as we were doing the table read together. And I remember as we saw that scene at the end, very few of us saw it coming, and it was really, really, really wild."
"And what I think is really fun about it is, when you go back and you watch the season, I think you'll see hints of it throughout and retroactively you would understand, you know?" Jones suggests.
As for how this game-changer will affect the dynamics within Woodstone mansion, Jones revealed "a surprising character will discover it and use it as leverage."
The two-part Ghosts holiday episode airs Thursday, Dec. 15 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
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