Dan Levy Confirms There Will Be No 'Schitt's Creek' Reunion Without the Late Catherine O'Hara
Dan Levy is speaking out about the late Catherine O’Hara.
The 42-year-old writer and actor knew the actress through the years she worked with his dad, before they eventually worked together on the Emmy award-winning comedy Schitt’s Creek.
In a new interview on CBS Sunday Morning, Dan reflected on working with Catherine, how she originally turned down starring in the show, and how there will never be a reunion anymore since she passed away earlier this year.
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Dan confirmed that she did make the 10-minute presentation pilot, but that was it, she didn’t want to continue with it.
“Then the show got bought. My dad went to her, said, ‘You want to come and do a season?’ She said, ‘No.’ He called me and I don’t know where I got the audacity, honestly, at the age of, I think it was like 29, and I said to him, ‘Call her back,’” Dan shared. “‘Call her back, and tell her we will only do one season, if she hates it, she doesn’t have to sign an option.’ And, this again, is the beauty of being in control of your own show… ‘If she hates it, I don’t want to make a show that she doesn’t want to make. So, let’s just…’ He went back to her, he pitched one season. She said yes, and that was that.”
Dan also opened up about how Catherine would constantly make him break character and leaving in those moments in the final cut of the episodes.
“A lot of the times you could read it right on my face. I broke so many times on that show and you can see it. We kept it in, because I liked the idea that actors, that the characters would laugh at other characters. You know what I mean?” he said. “You don’t think about it really because I think so often the funny things are not met with like the people in the scenes don’t think the person who’s being funny is funny. It really tickles me to have the actual characters laughing along with the audience. And so we left in a lot of the times where I would be smirking or where I was struggling to keep it together because I thought, well, maybe that’s what the character was doing, too.”
Dan called working with Catherine “awe inspiring,” and praised her for never doing a take of a scene the same way.
“She would never do the same take twice. So, as an actor, it’s the most exciting thing in the world because you never know what you’re going to get,” he said. “You could do the same scene six times and she would find different ways of performing that scene and keeping the audience alive. It was her curiosity, but it was also a tremendous generosity on her part to give us all that kind of spontaneity.”
“Thankfully, she took it and ran with it. And it was then my job to just make sure that she had everything she needed to make that character what it became,” he added. “It’s one of the great honors of my life.”
In another clip, where he visited the town they filmed the show, the interviewer, Anthony Mason, brought up how fans always ask about a reboot or reunion.
@cbssundaymorning “I didn’t think that I’d have quite an emotional reaction”: “Schitt’s Creek” co-creator Dan Levy returns to Goodwood, Ontario, the town where the hit show was filmed — and dismisses the idea of a sequel without his late co-star, Catherine O’Hara, who died in January. #danlevy #schittscreek ♬ original sound – CBS Sunday Morning
“No, not now,” he candidly said. “You can’t.”
He also said that he had thought of doing it before she passed. “It’s tough.”
Recently, in another interview, Dan shared what gives him “great comfort” after her death.