Meaghan Rath's best work is done standing still. As the ghost in Being Human she made a woman who could not touch anything the saddest and most watchable person in the house, and the career since has been busy and hard to see clearly.
Fi1m perspective
Here is what Meaghan Rath does. In the first episode of Being Human (2011), Sally Malik stands on the stairs of the Boston house she died in and watches the man she was going to marry show two strangers round it. He now owns the place. He never looks up. Rath has no line and does not reach for one; she stands in the doorway of her own life and looks at it going on without her. We found it sadder than a ghost in a rented house had any right to be, and it is still the moment we would show anyone who asked what she is for.
It was a hard part. Sam Witwer's vampire and Sam Huntington's werewolf could at least leave the house, hold a cup, be touched. Sally could do none of that, so Rath had to build a character out of stillness and attention, and she did it for four seasons, from 2011 to 2014, while the writers, Jeremy Carver and Anna Fricke among them, kept wandering off into a vampire power struggle that was never as interesting as the kitchen. The series was best whenever it remembered that being unable to leave is worse than being dead. That is another way of saying it was best when it remembered her.
The career around it is Canadian television and then American television, and not much cinema. A small part in Lost and Delirious (2001), the teen series 15/Love (2004–2006) and The Assistants (2009) came first; a lead in the independent Three Night Stand (2013), which she also executive produced, came in the middle of the Sally years. Afterwards she went where working actors go: recurring in New Girl (2015–2016) and Banshee (2015), then three seasons as Tani Rey in Hawaii Five-0 (2017–2020), then Supergirl, How I Met Your Father and Children Ruin Everything (2022–2025). Her brother Jesse Rath is also an actor, and the two have shared the screen twice.
She has said that she loves comedy and learned to love drama on Being Human, and that "a mix of the two is perfect for me". The parts have obliged, up to a point. She keeps being handed the supernatural, a ghost, a version of Brainiac-5, and there is not much serious writing about her anywhere, because long-running network shows are the kind critics stop watching after the pilot.
So we cannot tell you whether anyone has asked her to stand still since 2014, only that the shows she has worked in since are built to keep people moving. If a director ever gives her a room she cannot leave and no lines to fill it, we will be there.
Biography
Meaghan Rath is a Canadian actress. She was born on 18 June 1986 in Montreal, Quebec, and studied cinema and communications at Dawson College.
She is known for her role as Sally Malik in the series Being Human (2011–2014). Other television credits include 15/Love (2004–2006), The Assistants (2009), Hawaii Five-0 (2017–2020) as Tani Rey, New Girl (2015–2016), and Supergirl (2015).
Rath has appeared in films including Lost and Delirious (2001) and Three Night Stand (2013), the latter of which she also executive produced. She is the sister of actor Jesse Rath.
