“Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire ”star Mckenna Grace says it was 'special' but 'very scary' filming with original cast

The actress tells EW that the original cast was on set "90 percent of the time" compared to the two weeks that they filmed for 2021's "Ghostbusters: Afterlife."

Mckenna Grace ain't afraid of no ghosts, but she was a little terrified of working alongside the original Ghostbusters — Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts — in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.

Although the actress — who stars as Phoebe, the ghostbusting granddaughter of the late Harold Ramis’ character Egon Spengler — previously starred opposite the legends in the 2021 film Ghostbusters: Afterlife, she tells Entertainment Weekly that having them on set for the sequel was a totally different experience. 

“Last time on Afterlife, they kind of came around at the end stretch, and we had them around for like two weeks,” Grace explains. “But this go around, it was very fun to have them on set.”

This time, the original Ghostbusters are all active players in the fight to stop the evil demon Garraka from ushering Earth into a second ice age. While Ray (Aykroyd), Phoebe, and their pal Podcast (Logan Kim) embark on a quest to find out more about the mysterious orb that contains the deity, Winston (Hudson) has founded the Paranormal Research Center so that the team can further study the supernatural. In fact, the new location is the place where Peter (Murray) conducts a cross-dimensional test on Kumail Nanjiani’s character Nazeem with some pretty fiery end results.

In general, Grace says that the original team was around “90 percent of the time” while they were shooting Frozen Empire. “It was really fun to be able to just get to hang out with them, hear their stories, get to know them, get to watch them ghostbust!” she remarks. “Get to watch the OG Ghostbusters do their thing.”

That didn’t make sharing the screen with them any less daunting, though. “It was very special to be able to have [them there] — it was also very scary,” she admits. “Am I holding my proton pack right in front of the guys who created it? It's nerve-wracking, but very, very special.”

She did, however, learn one very important thing from their time all together on set: who among them she’d call if she ever needed help actually capturing a ghost. “Dan Aykroyd,” Grace replies instantly. “He’s my answer to everything that’s a ghost-related question. It’s always gonna be Dan.”

Grace isn’t the only one who was overwhelmed to be ghostbusting with the team. Paul Rudd, who plays Phoebe’s father figure Gary Grooberson, tells EW that the excitement of working with the legacy members never really wore off for him or his costar Carrie Coon.

“To put on those flight suits and proton packs and stand them amongst them and act in scenes with them… it was a surreal experience,” he adds. “[Carrie and I] kind of kept looking over at each other without saying it. You could see it in each other's eyes of like, ‘Oh, my God, I can't believe we're here.’ Seeing this, doing this with them. And that never really went away.”

“I mean, it probably abated a bit to the point where we were able to film the scenes and not fall over ourselves,” he jokes. “But the kind of the appeal and kind of strangeness of it all never really left us.”

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is in theaters now.

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Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.