A Margaret Cho Stalker & A Character’s Death On ‘Ghost Whisperer’

If you’re a ‘Ghost Whisperer‘ fan, I have good news and bad news about this season.

I’ll start with the bad news first. An important character will die, which will take place on the show’s very special 100th episode on March 5th, directed by none other than Jennifer Love Hewitt herself.

Now that you’ve had a chance to recoil in terror, I’ll give you the good news: Comedienne and ‘Drop Dead Diva‘ star Margaret Cho will be introduced to us on this Friday’s episode as Avery Grant, an Anthropology/Occult professor who is stalked by an ex-boyfriend – one who just happens to be dead. Showrunner P.K. Simonds tells us that she might very well be back as a recurring character.

But that’s not all! There’s a possibility that you might eventually see Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Melinda joining forces with ‘Medium’s‘ Allison Dubois (Patricia Arquette) on a ‘Ghost Whisperer’ crossover, since both shows have been teamed up back-to-back on CBS’s Friday night slot – and they both deal with spooky goings-on. Although Simonds couldn’t promise us anything, he told us there have been “conversations” with the network.

Tell us about an upcoming special episode that Jennifer Love directed.
Love directed the season opener and our 15th episode, which is the 100th episode of the series. It’s a big big episode that was written by John Gray who created the show. It’s an explosive episode, and Love did a terrific job. She’s a really good director – she’s just a natural. She grown up around cameras, she knows all the rules. And it’s not just a vanity credit, she approaches this like a challenge to be creative, new things to do with the camera, it’s just great and she’s really enthusiastic and imaginative.

The episode will be special for another reason, too.
Yes, there’s a character, an important one, who is gonna die, in the 100th episode. Fans might want to start wondering who that is. I’m not sure they’ll be able to guess. And that takes us ahead to the home stretch. There’s gonna be a reckoning between Melinda, her son Aiden, Eli and Ned and the book that they’ve been reading and their battle against the shadows. There’s a very big climax we’re headed to at the end of the season and everything is at stake. It’s all gonna come down to the lives of all our key characters being on the line – especially Melinda and Aiden.

Have you ever considered a crossover with ‘Medium,’ since both shows deal with the occult and they are now teamed up on Friday night?
There have been conversations about that. I don’t think it’s in the table for this season, though and I haven’t heard anything about it. What we worry on our side about is that there might be logic issues for our audience since we’ve jumped ahead in time. Also, there’s sort of a tonal disconnect between both shows – their show is a little edgier a a little darker, and we admire it tremendously. It might be tricky finding the episode, but I’m sure you could meet somewhere in the middle.

This Friday, Margaret Cho makes her debut. How does her character fit in with Melinda and the Book of Shadows?
We’re very excited about the episode. Margaret is a really talented and funny actor and she had a lot of fans on our staff. We wanted to create a character who professionally gave us some of the stuff that we got from Jay Mohr’s character in terms of access to and interest in the occult. But we’re not trying to replace Jay, we’re just trying to do something different, and we thought she was a brilliant idea for the character. Unlike Professor Paine, who kind of serviced some of our supernatural-driven episode concepts, we actually built a story around this new character. It’s a bittersweet, romantic but comic ghost mystery with a lot of twists and turns.

Will Professor Grant be back for additional episodes?
We know of two for sure, our 14th and 17th episode, although we’re hoping that the schedule works out and there’s a future for the character. If not for this season, then next season.

Catch ‘Ghost Whisperer’ Friday night at 8/7c on CBS – and the special 100th episode March 5

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