Ghosts Star Asher Grodman on 'Trevor's Body,' Tara Reid and Future Hookups with Hetty

Bertrand Calmeau/CBS

This post contains spoilers from Thursday's episode of Ghosts.

As soon as it was revealed in an earlier episode of Ghosts that the body of '90s stockbroker bro Trevor Lefkowitz had been thrown into the pond at the Woodstone B&B, the discovery of his remains seemed to be an inevitable future episode.

But even the man behind Trevor, actor Asher Grodman, didn't expect "Trevor's Body" to arrive so soon in the hit CBS comedy's run.

"I look at this show and I'm like, 'There are a million possibilities.' There's no need to find my body until season 7," Grodman tells PEOPLE. "I don't ever think that things are going to happen as quickly as they end up happening. I was surprised."

With guest appearances from Laraine Newman and Chip Zein as well as Tara Reid — whom Trevor loves to name-drop when telling stories of parties in the Hamptons — Grodman, 35, isn't complaining. Instead, he's laughing, even at the scenes he wasn't in.

"The thing that was a real treat for me with this episode is that it was so funny," he says. "This is the only table read that we've done that I actually cried laughing. The whole thing with the horny Pilgrim [a ghost from a neighboring home] who was talking like he was in an internet chat room or something? That was so funny."

Below, Grodman shares more of his experience on "Trevor's Body," as well as what's next for Trevor and some of the ghosts, especially Hetty (Rebecca Wisocky).

Bertrand Calmeau/CBS

PEOPLE: Before we get into "Trevor's Body," let's talk about last season's standout episode, "Trevor's Pants." What does it mean to you that it was included in so many best of 2022 lists?

ASHER GRODMAN: I go back to, I was unemployed for 20 years and the most acting I was ever doing was to two people in an audition room with no windows. The idea that we made something in our little bunker in Montreal that people rated on a list is mind-boggling. It's this crazy thing. That was episode 16 of 18, so we had 16 episodes for the cast to figure out our dynamic and our chemistry and stuff like that. We got that script and we probably started shooting 48 hours later, and we had a very short period of time to figure out Trevor's group dynamic with the friends who really helped form him as a human. How does that play out? Those guest stars were incredible and so down to play and so much fun. I also have to give a tip of the cap to the writers because the episode plays out like a murder mystery, but it's about a missing pair of pants, and so the juxtaposition of those two things is so clever.

There is a braggadocios version of this kind of guy that Trevor is, where it's all bulls---, it's all just telling stories. For Trevor, all of the things that you think would be lies, like Tara Reid's birthday or being at the White Party, all that stuff is real — it's the simple good guy stuff that is all hidden away. I think that switch is also very exciting.

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Emily Assiran Asher Grodman

The magic of that episode is that it gives Trevor this unexpected depth and completely changes how the viewer sees him.

We're always figuring out, among the eight of these ghosts, how do we relate to each other? How do we compare to each other? Trevor is, I would say, the most social of the ghosts because the thing that happened to him was the worst thing that ever happened to him, realizing that his friends who he loved didn't see him the same way or weren't capable of that. There's something about the concept of the show that lets you do something that juxtaposes something as trivial as a pair of pants up against something like hazing and group dynamics and heartbreak, and I'm very lucky to be part of this concept.

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For "Trevor's Body," what did you think when you heard Laraine Newman and Chip Zein were playing your parents? You don't really get to play with them so much as around them though.

We're not talking to each other, but we're kind of playing at each other. They're doing a thing that is going to set me off, and so I get to kind of be the surfer behind their boats. That's so much fun, because they both are so spontaneous and smart. The speech that Laraine does at the memorial was just so heartfelt and devastating. I didn't want them to leave, I wanted to keep hanging out with my parents. They are both legends!

Bertrand Calmeau/CBS

What was your reaction when you found out they were actually getting Tara Reid to come on the show?

When the pilot first aired, I remember the next morning waking up to a tweet from Tara Reid, and she had quote-tweeted the Trevor speech, and she just said something like, "You guys are funny." For us, it was like we're all little nerds and losers trying to make jokes, and we're just poking bears and movie stars and stuff, and then one of the movie stars turned around and said, "Oh, I like you guys," and we were all like, "Ah!" I sent it to our showrunners, and they were like, "Oh my God, we have to get her on the show." We all geeked out, and when I saw it, of course, part of me was like, "Yes, this had to happen," but another part of me was very much like, "I can't believe the wild ride that this show has been on, out of the pandemic, of being utterly isolated and now we did this show, and people are watching this show and people are wanting to be on this show."

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Were you surprised she wasn't there for sentimental reasons?

I just think going for the joke is the fun thing there, and it gives you this rich little tidbit on Jeremy and who Trevor's brother is, which I hope we get to explore. I do think something happened between Trevor and Tara [when Trevor was alive], and it was such a fun subversion of the thing, especially when she turns the corner and you see her, and you're like, "Oh my God, it's real," and she's like, "Yeah, I'm here to cash in this thing. I got paid." It's funny 'cause even Tara showed up to set and she was like, "Well, they clearly spent the night together," and I was like, "Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too."

Bertrand Calmeau/CBS

We've got to talk about Trevor and Hetty. Are they really finished with their hookups, or could Trevor catch feelings?

They're certainly not done, I can tell you that. There's a fun thing happening right now in the house … we all just pick up on behaviors. Season 1 was all about Sam getting to know us and us getting to know Sam, and now we've seen Sam and Jay be in a house and be romantic and sleep together and all this stuff, and now all we want to do is have sex with each other. It's like we're all just modeling mom and dad in our own ways.

I think it's a very funny thing. There was one moment right before we did season 1 where our showrunners were like, "Give us pitches, do you guys have any thoughts?" They've never offered to do it again, but we had these meetings and we went in and met in the writers' room, and we each did them separately. I found out afterward that Rebecca, who plays Hetty, and I walked in with the exact same pitch, which was Trevor and Hetty have to have something. Neither of us wanted it to be romantic — and I don't think that this will be, I think it'll have tones of that, but that's not what's at the core of it — but both of us were like, "These two need to have an entanglement." Because they're at once very similar: aside from the 100-year difference, they see the world as a hierarchy and they want to win that hierarchy. It's the finance, the money, the power play, Trevor's a little more into the fun and respect that comes from the power, and Hetty's just into the power. And then in other ways they're polar opposites: he's so sexually liberated and she is getting there.

So there's lots of room there for combustibility. I think it's a lot of fun to have this sexual yet transactional kind of relationship, but also if she wants to go manipulate some people, Trevor's a good person to strategize with. They operate similarly, despite the fact that they both are in some ways repulsed by each other.

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Ghosts airs Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.