‘So Help Me Todd’ Star Skylar Astin Teases Possible Musical Crossover With ‘Ghosts’ Co-Star Utkarsh Ambudkar (Exclusive)

So Help Me Todd’s Skylar Astin and Ghosts star Utkarsh Ambudkar are old friends, going all the way back to around 2012 when they both appeared in Pitch Perfect as Treblemakers Jesse Swanson and Donald, respectively. Now, both men are on separate CBS shows and fans are pretty eager for them to work together again. PopCulture.com had a chance to chat with Astin and his So Help Me Todd co-star, Marcia Gay Harden, and the golden-voiced actor teased that maybe they could do a musical crossover episode — should the opportunity ever arise.

When we presented the idea of the two shows existing in the same universe, Skylar needed no more convincing. “Done. That would be so fun,” he told PopCulture. Since the pair are both skilled musicians, we wondered if maybe the crossover could be a musical episode and naturally, the answer is one everyone will be dying for. 

“I mean, let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but yes,” Astin quipped, joking that it could be a “great success” if they went in that direction. “Maybe I’ll sing a song or two,” he added, presenting a very compelling quandary. “I wonder if Jay and Todd, though, would sound like Skylar and Utkarsh… I don’t think so. So I think that the misdirect is that we go to do a duet, and it sounds awful.”

While there is no way of knowing when, or if, we’ll ever actually get a Ghosts/So Help Me Todd crossover, both shows still have a lot to offer CBS watchers. Ghosts is currently at the start of its second season, and Ambudkar — who plays Jay Arondekar, husband of Rose McIver’s Samantha — previously teased to PopCulture, “I think there’s a lot of Hetty in this season that’s really funny. Hetty is having a sort of, personal awakening.” He added, “She grew up in a time where women weren’t really allowed to express themselves at all in a way that I think did a disservice to her. And so now in this season, thanks to Flower [Sheila Carrasco] and some of the other ghosts and Samantha [Rose McIver], she’s getting a chance to emancipate herself, so to speak and it’s very satisfying and also hilarious.”

As for Astin, he plays the title character in So Help Me Todd, a down-on-his-luck private investigator who reunites with his mother (Harden) to work with her law firm. “I love playing a black sheep of a family, and I also liked playing someone who’s left of center,” Astin told PopCulture. “It gives him a lot of an area to explore, but also being that he’s starting from the bottom, it gives him a lot of places to go. I also love the fact that he is a private detective because I think there’s a lot of quirkiness there, especially in his tactics. He’s a bit of a wild card, a bit of a renegade.” He continued, “And another thing that attracted me to the script was, of course, the two-hander aspect of it. The mother, Margaret Wright, a high-powered attorney… Just how they are so opposite, yet have to learn how to work together even though they are estranged.”

Ghosts airs Thursdays at 8:30 pm ET on CBS. So Help Me Todd airs immediately after Ghosts, at 9 p.m. ET. Paramount+ subscribers can also watch the show live, or stream it the next day. Ghosts Season 1 is streaming on Paramount+ now, and new episodes become available to stream immediately on the streamer. Those interested in trying out a free trial of Paramount+ can do so by clicking here.