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JULIE AND THE PHANTOMS Cast Plays Would You Rather | What’s Your Dream Ghost Date?

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The cast of “Julie and the Phantoms” got asked who they’d rather haunt forever — the love of their life or their worst enemy.

TV Guide sat down with the ensemble of Kenny Ortega’s Netflix musical series for a round of “Would You Rather: Ghost Edition,” a lighthearted press-junket segment built entirely around the show’s supernatural premise. Madison Reyes, Charlie Gillespie, Owen Patrick Joyner, Jeremy Shada, Booboo Stewart, Cheyenne Jackson and Sacha Carlson traded hypotheticals about haunting, dating and everything in between, months after the series’ September 2020 debut.

• The cast weighed in on whether they’d rather haunt the love of their life or their archenemy for eternity.
• Each actor described what their ideal date with a ghost would actually look like.
• The group tackled a pop-culture matchup: a date with Patrick Swayze’s character from 1990’s “Ghost” versus a ghost from their own show.

Haunting The One You Love (Or The One You Hate)

The premise of “Julie and the Phantoms” already hinges on ghosts sticking around for the people who matter to them, so the “haunt your love or your enemy” question landed as a natural fit for the cast. Madison Reyes, who plays Julie Molina opposite the band of phantoms, leaned into the show’s own logic when she considered the choice, noting she’d rather stay tethered to someone she loved than waste an afterlife tormenting a rival.

Charlie Gillespie and Owen Patrick Joyner, who play Luke Patterson and Alex Mercer, kept the tone playful throughout, riffing on the idea that haunting an archenemy sounds fun in theory but gets exhausting fast if you’re stuck doing it forever. Jeremy Shada, who rounds out the Sunset Curve trio as Reggie Peters, added his own spin on the debate, framing it the way his character might: with more heart than strategy.

Dream Dates With A Ghost

Once the hypotheticals moved to actual date planning, the cast got specific about what a night out with a phantom would involve. Booboo Stewart, who plays Willie on the series, and Cheyenne Jackson, who plays the show’s antagonist Caleb Covington, brought contrasting energy to the bit — Stewart leaning sweet, Jackson leaning theatrical, in keeping with Caleb’s flair for the dramatic.

Sacha Carlson, who plays Nick, and the rest of the group kept circling back to the show’s central joke: that dating a ghost means dealing with someone who can walk through walls but still can’t be seen by most of the people around you. It’s the kind of bit that only works because the actors are clearly comfortable riffing on their own characters’ rules.

Patrick Swayze’s character from “Ghost” versus a phantom from their own show — the cast had to pick, and nobody took it lightly.

Swayze’s Ghost Versus Their Own

The segment’s sharpest moment came when the cast had to choose between a date with Swayze’s character from the 1990 classic “Ghost” or a ghost pulled straight from their own series. It’s a fair fight given how much “Julie and the Phantoms” borrows from that film’s romantic-supernatural blueprint, and the actors clearly knew it, treating the choice as a genuine debate rather than a throwaway question.

That kind of self-aware humor has been a hallmark of the show’s press cycle, not unlike the way other ensemble casts have used junket games to show off chemistry that doesn’t always come through in scripted scenes — the sort of dynamic fans track the same way they follow celebrity interview moments that reveal more personality than the sit-down itself intended.

Success Factors for the Bit

Games like this one live or die on cast chemistry, and “Julie and the Phantoms” had it in spades by the time this interview ran — Reyes, Gillespie, Joyner and Shada had already spent a season building the on-screen rapport that made Sunset Curve believable as a band, and it carried straight into how loose they were answering questions that had nothing to do with the plot. It’s the same reason junket segments built around ensemble casts, similar to the kind of banter fans expect from any well-cast long-running ensemble show, tend to outperform standard press-tour Q&As.

The full round of “Would You Rather: Ghost Edition” ran as part of TV Guide’s promotional push around the show’s Netflix debut, and it’s the kind of clip that ages well precisely because none of it depends on plot details — just seven actors, a handful of ghost-dating hypotheticals, and Cheyenne Jackson clearly having the most fun of anyone in the room.