Why playing a closeted Revolutionary War soldier on ‘Ghosts’ worried Brandon Scott Jones

“He’s somebody who would rather be at the party talking about the war than be in the war,” Brandon Scott Jones says of his “Ghosts” character Capt. Isaac Higgintoot.

(Robert Holland / For The Times)

Brandon Scott Jones’ portrayal of Capt. Isaac Higgintoot, a faux Founding Father with an inexplicable one-sided rivalry with Alexander Hamilton, on the CBS supernatural sitcom “Ghosts” has charmed critics and audiences alike.

Having spent most of his career playing smaller, recurring roles on “The Good Place” and “The Other Two,” the 38-year-old actor, who most recently appeared opposite Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult in the theatrical horror-comedy “Renfield,” says he is still struggling to wrap his head around the breakout success of the ensemble series, which has helped breathe new life into the network sitcom.

But when Jones first received the audition to play Higgintoot, who falls in love with a British soldier in the afterlife, he didn’t think he could believably embody the gravitas of a forgotten and closeted Revolutionary War soldier.

“I felt like his military background was going to be so important to believing this character who’s frustrated in death and holding onto these secrets,” Jones says of his first series regular role during a recent video call. “And when I got the callback, I was surprised and tried to lean into why I thought [the producers] might want to see me again. Isaac is a soldier, but that’s not what he wanted to do; he’s somebody who would rather be at the party talking about the war than be in the war.”

Brandon Scott Jones plays Revolutionary War Capt. Isaac Higgintoot, left, in the ensemble series “Ghosts.”

(CBS)

Born and raised in Bel Air, Md., Jones dreamed of becoming a professional tennis player. But once he realized that was not a viable option, he directed his attention to the performing arts, having grown up with parents who would show him Mel Brooks and Rosalind Russell films. He studied acting at the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts and later performed with the Upright Citizens Brigade, where he learned the value of working in an ensemble cast.

That knowledge has proved invaluable on “Ghosts,” a high-concept comedy about a bed-and-breakfast owner (played by Rose McIver) who, after falling down a flight of stairs, finds that she can see and communicate with the spirits of those who have died on the property across the years.

For instance, Jones often uses Hetty Woodstone (Rebecca Wisocky), the show’s Victorian-era lady of the manor, as a point of reference for Isaac’s mannerisms, because they are the most preoccupied with asserting their level of status in the house, even in death. “I think he respects her and she respects him, and they’re the two characters that probably don’t have a lot of respect for other people,” the actor notes. “It’s fun to be simpatico with a character like that, but then, it feels very farcical when we’re together.”

Brandon Scott Jones sits in a booth at Teddy’s in the Roosevelt Hotel.

(Robert Holland / For The Times)

Jones’ performance is an exercise in restraint, requiring an instinctive understanding of when to lean into Isaac’s quirks and eccentricities and when to pull back. “For me, it’s all about posture and trying to know that this is a man who doesn’t feel comfortable in his own skin, and that, as a soldier, the more he tries to stay still, the more flailing and flamboyant his motions become when they erupt,” he says with a laugh.

Instead of doing research about that time period, Jones decided to look at past projects that depicted the men of that era: “Hamilton,” “1776,” “The Patriot” and “John Adams.” With “so much of the political discourse in America right now” having to do with “what the Founding Fathers wanted for everybody,” Jones thinks there is something subversive about playing a man who might have been “a product of his time” but doesn’t share all of the same ideals.

Throughout the first two seasons, Isaac has been coming to terms with his sexuality and has begun a romantic relationship with Nigel Chessum (John Hartman), an enemy soldier whom he accidentally shot and killed while admiring him from afar — all while realizing that he had a “wonderful partnership” with his loving wife, Beatrice (Hillary Anne Matthews), even if “he felt like a failure” at the time for not always being able to fulfill his spousal duties to her.

Isaac “is also now experiencing things that feel very current and feel very relatable to how we understand society now,” Jones says. “I think there’s something really interesting about it, like, ‘Wow, if we keep holding on to the past, how are we ever going to move forward?’ And that’s what is constantly at the center of Isaac’s dramatic question.

“Isaac is definitely somebody who, in terms of queerness, doesn’t have agency over it yet, and he’s still trying to figure that out. It’s something that I know I dealt with, which was a little bit of that self-loathing,” acknowledges Jones, who has found a certain catharsis himself in playing Isaac as a gay person. “Hopefully, seeing this journey of somebody learning to love himself will inspire others to understand somebody who might be going through it. That process of self-acceptance is so personal … because when you can love yourself, it frees you up to love others.”