PARTING SHOT
Illustration by BRITT SPENCER
SHE HAS COLLABORATED WITH EUGENE LEVY ON DOZENS OF PROJECTS SINCE they met at Second City in 1974, but when Catherine O’Hara heard from him about a Canadian sitcom created with his son, Daniel, she hesitated. “Ever since SCTV, I’ve had an aversion to locking into one character for any length of time,” says the actress. “But he convinced me to come to a pilot presentation, and I loved it. He tricked me!” The sweetly wacky Schitt’s Creek, just beginning Season 5 (on CBC in Canada and Pop TV in the U.S.), stars O’Hara as Moira Rose, a former soap star, wife to Johnny (Levy) and mother to David (Daniel Levy) and Alexis (Annie Murphy). The family lost millions after Johnny was busted for fraud; now their only asset is the tiny town of Schitt’s Creek. While Moira, with her posh accent (unidentiiable), ever-changing wigs and over-the-top designer outits, might seem to have little in common with O’Hara’s anxious mother in 1990’s Home Alone or her clueless dog owner in 2000’s Best in Show, the actress sees a common thread: “I’ve always loved characters with no idea what impression they’re making.”