‘Hill House’ actor aspires to excel at table tennis

Dutch actor Michiel Huisman doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he does worship Ping-Pong.

On a recent Thursday afternoon, Huisman had tip-tapped down a steep flight of stairs on East 23rd Street and into Spin New York, a neon-lit basement Ping-Pong palace with a view of the downtown 6 train. The attraction is around the corner from the apartment he shares with his wife, actress Tara Elder, and their 11-year-old daughter.

Huisman — who played Daario Naharis in “Game of Thrones” and now stars as a ghost skeptic in “The Haunting of Hill House” on Netflix — has been playing table tennis since he was a child. He carries his own paddle, proudly displaying the Donic Appelgren Allplay faced in red and black rubber.

He’d gone to Spin during walk-in hours, hoping for a pickup game. No one seemed to want to play with him. Finally, one of the in-house pros, Matt Suchy, took pity on Huisman and offered an impromptu lesson.

They warmed up, and Suchy was immediately impressed. “Your serve is so nasty!” Suchy said. But Huisman struggled to keep the point in play. The problem? The paddle.

Suchy took the Donic from him and showed him how the worn rubber had lost its traction — a smooth surface makes spin difficult — and had even begun to peel away from the wood.

A kind of horror dawned. “It’s been holding me back for so long,” Huisman said. “Years maybe.”

This is the kind of horror Huisman accepts. Steve, the character he plays in “The Haunting of Hill House,” is a vigorous ghost denier — and Huisman isn’t so different, although he did admit that once, on a night shoot in Britain when he was in his early 20s, he became so terrified by a dark and yawning bathroom that he couldn’t unzip and sprinted back to the set.

Practical and mostly unspookable, Huisman said he was never really frightened during the eight months it took to shoot the 10 episodes.

His worst shock? When he walked into the makeup trailer one morning and saw one of the ghost characters sitting in his chair. “Some of the specialeffects makeup was really intense,” he said.

But that was as bad as it got, Huisman said.

Apparently, he doesn’t think the show is overly scary, either. He let his daughter watch it, sometimes forgetting to tell her when to cover her eyes.

He gestured toward Suchy, prepping for another go-round. “This is scary,” Huisman said.

Suchy gave him one of his own paddles, a Tenergy the size of a salad plate. “Immediately the ball has lift and spin,” Huisman marveled. Suchy used a smaller paddle, the size of an oatmeal cookie. The first few points were close, but Suchy pulled away, winning 11-7.

They hugged it out. “You have no backhand,” Suchy said.

He adjusted Huisman’s grip, directing him to use only one finger on the back of the paddle.

“This is gold,” Huisman said, explaining that he had a key match coming up.

His table-tennis archrival, music manager Dennis Van Leeuwen — the man who had beaten him at Huisman’s surprise birthday party three years ago — was due in New York soon.

Suchy told Huisman that he had nothing to fear: “Just do that serve,” he said.