Sitting in the velvet-drenched shadows of the Masonic Temple in Detroit, you can feel the history of the place grinding against the modern hype of prestige television. It is Aug. 10 and the air outside is thick, but inside, the atmosphere is sharp. This is not just a promotional stop. It is a victory lap for a show that survived the brutal gauntlet of the Canadian television landscape to become a global obsession.
Catherine O’Hara sits there, radiating the kind of effortless cool that only comes from decades of being the smartest person in the room. She is an Officer of the Order of Canada and an alumna of the legendary SCTV years, but to the screaming fans in the front rows, she is simply Moira Rose. For five seasons on CBC and Pop TV, she has turned the matriarch of the Rose family into a linguistic puzzle and a fashion icon. Now, as she stares down the barrel of a 14-episode final season in 2020, she is reflecting on the strange, beautiful arc of *Schitt’s Creek*.
The show is a deceptively simple setup: a wealthy family loses everything and ends up in a motel in a town they once bought as a joke. But the execution is what killed. It is heartfelt and heavily bingeable, avoiding the cynical traps most comedies fall into. O’Hara is here in Detroit with the full stable—Eugene Levy, Daniel Levy, Annie Murphy, Emily Hampshire and Noah Reid—to pull back the curtain.
Daniel Levy is the one steering this ship tonight, acting as the moderator for a family dynamic that feels terrifyingly real. O’Hara explains the mechanics of these live sessions with a casual shrug that belies the work involved.
"Daniel Levy is the moderator, and basically the Rose family, and Stevie, and Patrick, so, that would be Noah Reid, and Emily Hampshire, and then Annie Murphy, and Eugene Levy, Daniel Levy, and I sit on stage with Daniel as a moderator, and we tell stories that you wouldn’t hear anywhere else," O’Hara says.
There is a specific rhythm to these shows. It is part retrospective and part variety hour. They lean into the nostalgia without letting it get stagnant. And the fans eat it up because it feels like an invitation into the writers' room.
"We have great clip packages, as they call them, or videos. Whatever. I don’t know what the best word to describe them to people is, but for us it would be clip packages of sort of behind the scenes. Funny material that you wouldn’t see elsewhere. We play a trivia game with members of the audience, and someone in particular sings a great song that you might have heard before from a character on the show, within the show. It’s just really, really fun. We’ve had the loveliest audiences. They seem to be there for each other as much as us, and it’s just a big loving, happy, family kind of evening. It’s been really fun and I hope it’ll be fun for the audience in Detroit," she says.
The reality of the end is starting to set in. They wrapped filming for season six back in June, and the ghost of that final day still haunts the conversation. In an industry where shows are often cancelled via a cold press release or a sudden drop in metrics, the *Schitt’s Creek* team got to walk to the finish line on their own terms.
"The last month was emotional," O’Hara admits, her voice dropping a register. "I think when you shoot the scenes we’re all in, you might be a two person, four person scene, whatever, but you don’t see everyone’s scenes being shot until the show is put together. But, at the table read you get to watch and hear everyone read their scenes, and that was the most emotional for me and for most of us. Just reading those last shows together around the table was emotional. Not horribly sad sad, but just... These were lovely days we spent together, and we’re all really proud of the show, and it was kind of sweet and sad to say goodbye to it. But luckily we have these live shows, so we get to get together. We’ll continue to do that, so we look forward to that, and I look forward to promoting the next season, which will start next winter. But it was sweet and sad. There was a lot of crying, but always a lot of laughs, too, which is good."
It is rare to see a creator have the discipline to walk away when the heat is at its peak. Daniel and Eugene Levy could have milked this for a decade. But they chose the narrative over the paycheck. That kind of creative integrity is what separates the legacy acts from the flash-in-the-pan hits.
"Yeah, they’re smart, and Daniel and Eugene will say this too, Daniel runs the show, and he had this mapped out from the beginning, if we were fortunate enough to get the six seasons out of CBC, and Pop network, and now Netflix. He had it mapped out. He knew where the characters were going, and they are really resolved in a lovely way. Each of the characters is really well cared for by Daniel and the writers. They were fortunate to be able to do it as planned," O’Hara says.
I guess all of it. It’s all the parts I want to deny about myself...Moira believes she’s a people person and believes she has handled this losing everything and being forced to move to this small town and live in this motel with her kids...she believes she’s handled it really well...She is, in spite of that fear and the armor that she’d put up, she does get how lucky she is to be with her family, and how lucky she is to be with these lovely people in the town.
The timeline of the ending was not a surprise to those on the inside. While the public might have felt a jolt when the announcement dropped, the internal clock had been ticking for a while. O’Hara recalls the low-key way she found out about the six-season cap.
"That’s funny. It makes us sound very important. No, but I did hear through a mutual friend a couple years before that, because Daniel discussed it with me. I heard through mutual friends that it was probably going to go to six. If we could, it was going to go to six seasons. I said, 'Really? Okay, sure. We’ll see,' and that’s what happened," she says.
Looking back at the genesis of the project, it is wild to think it almost did not happen. O’Hara is a legend, and legends get tired. They get picky. When Eugene Levy first approached her about a decade ago, she was not exactly looking for a long-term commitment to a television series.
"I guess that was about, must have been seven years ago, I guess, six or seven years ago," she reflects. "Eugene called me and said that he and Daniel had this idea for a show, and that they were going to shoot a 15-minute kind of pilot presentation. They were going to just do it on their own, and then see if they could sell the idea. I hemmed and hawed about it a bit because I’m lazy and I’m not sure I wanted to do a series. I wasn’t sure, and because I’m stupid. Then, I agreed. It sounded like fun, and it was great fun. We did this 15-minute presentation of the idea, and then we filmed it. So, I got to be part of it."
The chemistry between O'Hara and Eugene Levy is the tectonic plate upon which the show rests. It is a shorthand developed through the fires of SCTV, where the comedy was fast, the budget was tight and the talent was undeniable. There is a specific "SCTV vibe" to *Schitt’s Creek*—a sense of mutual trust that allows for the weirdest, most specific character choices to land.
"I know we all love and respect each other, and that’s...it’s not like we are plugging our noses to work together," O'Hara says. "It’s always been fun, and creative, and challenging. I like to try to work with people that I know I have something to learn from, and that would include Eugene and the people that I worked with in SCTV. Credit Eugene and Daniel for putting this group together for this show. Everyone, the cast is so lovely and fun and talented, and the crew is wonderful and, again, fun. I keep saying fun, but it really was a fun job. On SCTV we had a great producer, who trusted us to make the show, and he ran the business and we ran the show. We’re spoiled that way. We got to be as creative as we possibly could be. Eugene and Daniel have run the show the same way. So we all...everyone in the cast, I think, and crew felt respected. When you feel respected and loved, it makes you want to do your best work."
And then there is Eugene himself. To the world, he is the bushy-browed straight man. To O’Hara, he is the partner in crime who makes the labour feel like play. When asked what it is like to work with him, she cannot help but lead with a bit of that trademark dry wit.
"Oh, it’s awful! He’s awful!" she jokes, before softening. "No, he’s sweet. He’s great. He’s a gentleman, and that just makes the job all the more pleasant. He’s very smart, and talented, and funny, and intelligent, and talkative. He’s a lovely gentleman, and so is Daniel. He’s just...and he takes the work seriously. We both do. We take our comedy very seriously, and we try to make choices for our characters that are organic to the characters, who we believe the characters are. We work in a similar way, I think, so it’s hard to even analyze because it, thankfully, just kind of comes naturally. When I’m with him, I just feel like I’m in the right place when I work with him. He’s a good guy."
The fan base for this show is not just large; it is militant in its affection. They do not just watch; they travel. They visit the filming locations in Goodwood, Ontario, turning a tiny hamlet into a pilgrimage site. O’Hara, who is not exactly a digital native, found herself dragged into the world of social media just to witness the outpouring of love.
"Let’s see. They’re all...we have the sweetest people who watch our show. Eugene told me to sign up on Twitter just so I could read the tweets on the Schitt’s Creek account, and so I did. I’ve never tweeted, but I do read the tweets from people who watch the show, and they are the most loving, kind people in the world. Every one of them, just ridiculously supportive. I mean, you have to kind of get away from it and say, 'Okay, this isn’t real life.' This is just a group of lovely people, who for some reason love the show and love us. You can’t take it too seriously, but it is awfully encouraging. They are the nicest people in the world. When we do these live shows, they are there in the room, and they are just so loving, and cute, and fun-loving. I don’t know. I feel lucky to be part of it. I had a very weird fan, and I wouldn’t say fan thing. Never mind, never mind, just a weird story. Forget that. Yeah, I know. A lot of people want to kiss me. That’s a funny one. That makes my husband mad. I mean, I’m not saying its men. It’s like mostly women, I guess. Yeah, it is mostly women, some men. Can I kiss you? Okay."
Dissecting Moira Rose is a full-time job for critics. The wigs, the unidentifiable accent, the theatricality—it is a performance that could easily have become a caricature. But O’Hara anchors it in something human. When asked how much of Moira is actually inside her, she bristles with a comedic mock-offence.
"What do you mean by that? I take that personally. Go on," she laughs. "I guess all of it. It’s all the parts I want to deny about myself. All you have to draw on is yourself and your own experiences, but also people you’ve met. Then, the material. There’s Moira’s history in the script, and then I got to develop the character with Eugene and Dan, and take parts of weird qualities of people that I’ve met in my life and parts of myself. Maybe if I have a neurotic day. I’d say I’m generally not too neurotic a person. I don’t think so, but we all have our bad days. So, there’s a bit of that, but I so think that Moira believes she’s a people person and believes she has handled this losing everything and being forced to move to this small town and live in this motel with her kids. I think she’s handled it...she believes she’s handled it really well. She never harps on her husband about it, and I think Moira gets, as I hope I would get, how lucky she is to be with her grown children, to spend that much time with them and to learn, in spite of everything she’s done in her life before, learn to be a mother. A good mother."
Moira’s evolution from a narcissistic socialite to a woman who genuinely values her community is the show's secret weapon. It is a slow burn. In the early seasons, the pacing was a bit frantic, leaning into the "fish out of water" trope. But as the show matured, so did Moira’s internal life.
"Absolutely, yeah. Well, most of the family," O’Hara says regarding Moira’s love for her kin. "She’s learned to love the community, but I think Moira... well, I know Moira’s been very defensive from the beginning. I believe Moira came from a small town and got out earlier in life, and now she’s very threatened by living in a small town again. How long is this going to last? When am I getting out? So, it takes everything for her not to just weep about it and complain about it every day. She is, in spite of that fear and the armor that she’d put up, she does get how lucky she is to be with her family, and how lucky she is to be with these lovely people in the town."
In her own life, O’Hara has managed a balance that many in Hollywood find impossible. She has stayed grounded while her IMDb page exploded. The secret, it seems, is a very clear set of priorities that she established early on.
"I’m with my family as much as I can be," she says. "I’ve always...In deciding what work I might get involved in for my whole working life, my family’s always come first. I have two sons, and when they were babies, I thought what’s the point? What’s the point of having children if I’m not going to be with them, so that was always number one consideration and always will be. Because, I also know that when I am at work, I’m 100% at work. I actually forget that I’m married and have kids. That’s terrible, and I know I’m never really going to focus on the job at hand, which in most cases is being a wife and mother, but when I’m at work, I’m really focused on that. So, knowing that I’m going to be that way, I’ve always tried to be careful about what work I get myself involved in. And I have lovely friends. You know, you’ve got to have a life outside your work. I mean, you’re lucky if you do. I’m speaking as someone who’s blessed in that way. I do get to work and I get to be with my family and friends. Not everyone can do that."
With over 100 credits to her name, O’Hara has seen the industry change from the inside out. But when you ask her to pin down the definitive moment, she does not point to the Oscars or the big-budget films. She goes back to the basement.
"Do I?" she asks when told about her 103 credits. "Oh, dear. I would have to say Second City and SCTV started everything for me, trained me, and spoiled me, and taught me most of what I know. Introduced me to my wonderful working friends who I still get to work with, Eugene, and Marty Stuart, and Andrew Martin, and yes, lovely. Sorry, not a moment but definitely a job. Probably the most important job I ever got was with Second City, first the theatre, and then they led to doing the TV show. That opened the door for all of us, for our working lives. Otherwise, this show, Schitt’s Creek. To be at my age and get to be this silly and have this much fun is pretty cool, for me anyway. I don’t know about for anyone else."
As the evening in Detroit winds down, the conversation turns to the nature of comedy itself. It is a hard job that O’Hara makes look like a hobby. But there is a philosophy behind the silliness—a belief that laughter is a survival mechanism.
"I guess being able to laugh at life and at yourself more than at others is one of the greatest gifts we’ve been given, as humans," O’Hara concludes. "So any chance I can, I have to share that or give that to anybody else, you know, lucky me.
Get Tickets
