Dan Levy Describes How He and His Father Got a Reluctant Catherine O’Hara to Sign On to SCHITT’S CREEK — GeekTyrant

I have watched a lot of TV shows in my day. I remember many series with fondness, but only a few hold the title of my all-time favorites.

One of them is Schitt’s Creek– the story of the Rose family, millionaires who lost everything and moved to the title town to restart their lives. It’s a redemption story that shows what emotional growth looks like under the circumstances of finding true friends, reconnecting with family, and realizing what is truly important.

The six season, nine-time Emmy winning show boasted a genius cast including co-creators and real life father and son Dan Levy and Eugene Levy, as well as Catherine O’Hara, Annie Murphy, Emily Hampshire, Chris Elliott, Jennifer Robertson, Sarah Levy, Noah Reid and Dustin Milligan.

The show wouldn’t have been the same without any of these actors, and probably the most memorable of them all, Catherine O’Hara as Moira Rose, almost didn’t happen.

Dan Levy explained in a recent interview with CBC Gem:

“My dad had asked Catherine to be part of the presentation pilot. She had said yes, conditionally, and then the show got bought and we had to go back to her and say, ‘Remember that show that we shot, that was 14 minutes? Do you want to do that, now, for 13 episodes?’”

O’Hara has said previously that she was not looking to star in a series, but having a soft spot for her long-time co-star and friend, she agreed to the pilot. Dan went on:

“I said [to Dad], ‘Call her back. Tell her let’s just look at one year. We’ll go one year at a time, and if it’s not gonna work, it’s not gonna work.’ He called her, and she said yes! And the rest is history.”

The creative freedom the Levys gave her was unlike anything she’d experienced. O’Hara told Newsweek in 2019:

“They were like, ‘What do you wanna do?’ And I’d say, ‘I would like to have an insanely arcane vocabulary and use different words every day. And I’d like to wear a different wig depending on my mood. How would that work?’”

The answer is simply: magic. O’Hara is known for so many great roles- Home Alone, Beetlejuice, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, SCTV, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and most recently The Studio, in which she was brilliant, but the role of Moira was so hilariously over the top, and had so much of her input infused in it, the performance she gave will always be part of the best of TV history.