When I met Catherine O’Hara, on a recent afternoon at a hotel bar in midtown, she was wearing a ruffled ivory pirate blouse with a black ribbon tied around her neck and chunky, oversized black rings. The outfit looked like it could belong to Moira Rose, her flamboyant matriarch on the beloved comedy series “Schitt’s Creek,” who swans around a rural small town in monochromatic couture and a rotating collection of designer wigs. “Schitt’s Creek,” which was created by O’Hara’s longtime collaborator Eugene Levy and his son, Daniel Levy, both of whom also star in the show (Season 5 premièred last week), is a modern-day reverse “Beverly Hillbillies”: the Rose family, once the millionaire owners of a successful video-store chain, lose everything when their business manager commits fraud. Their only worldly possession is a one-horse hamlet called Schitt’s Creek, so the brood—Moira, her husband, Johnny (Eugene Levy), her son, David (Daniel Levy), and her daughter, Alexis (Annie Murphy)—must relocate to the town and squat inside its sole motel. It’s a classic city-mouse/country-mouse story, but O’Hara’s Moira, with her vainglorious flair for the dramatic and her peacocking wardrobe, elevates the show to a new level of ecstatic eccentricity. (If you need an introduction, watch the fake fruit-wine commercial she films in Season 1.)
People of a certain generation likely know her as Kevin’s mother from the “Home Alone” series, but O’Hara has been working in the business since the seventies, when she joined the Second City improv troupe in her native Toronto, as an understudy for Gilda Radner. That troupe also included Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Martin Short, and Dan Aykroyd, among others, and those members who did not join the original cast of “Saturday Night Live” went on to create the cult-popular Canadian sketch show “SCTV,” which aired on NBC in the United States. After leaving “SCTV,” O’Hara played the wicked stepmother Delia Deetz in Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice” and then spent the nineties as part of Christopher Guest’s troupe of oddballs, starring in his absurdist, unscripted mockumentaries “Waiting for Guffman,” “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind,” and “For Your Consideration.” During our free-wheeling conversation, we discussed Moira Rose, the origins of her collaboration with Levy, and the one idea that Christopher Guest would not let her put on film.
The following conversation has been edited and condensed.
You’re dressed like Moira today.
I have always done black and white when I travel.
It’s easy.
It’s easiest. I can’t plan ahead what I’m going to wear, so I just grab a bunch of black-and-white things, maybe some gray, maybe some blue, that’s it. But now, oh, yeah, my eye is drawn to it more than ever.
You have the chunky jewelry, too.
Before playing Moira I would probably not have worn this many rings at once.
How did the look of the character evolve?
It was serendipity, simpatico—if I had Moira’s vocabulary, I’d know how to put it. After we all agreed we were going to do the show, I had lunch with Daniel and Eugene Levy, and I knew we were going to talk about what I was going to look like. And I’d found all these pictures of Daphne Guinness. Her wardrobe, it’s just so great and extreme. It’s strong and it’s armor, which is perfect when you’ve had your life ripped out from under you, like Moira, and you’re in this place that’s like the town you got out of earlier in life.
Whose idea was it to have you wear vests with your pajamas?
I believe that was mine. It was this idea of wearing basically a business suit to bed, because there are so many pin-striped pajamas. I think that’s how it started. But the brooch idea might have been theirs.
Did it help you find Moira, too, once you got the clothes on?
Absolutely. Every day I put those clothes on, it makes me stand differently, walk differently.
You’ve had a lot of good walks in the course of your career. I read somewhere that Cookie’s walk in “Best in Show,” the goofy limp at the end, was your walk also.
My dad used to do it to make us laugh. He’d walk ahead of us and make us laugh. I have six sisters and brothers—they could all do that walk. I got to use it on film, weasel that I am. The night before we shot that scene in “Best in Show,” where I would fall, and then [Eugene’s character] Gerry Fleck would have to take over handling the dog, we were talking about the logistics, and I asked Chris, I said, “Do you think I could do this?” I walked away from him like that.
He went, “Yeah, yes.” Nothing better than getting a yes on a ridiculous idea.
Did you grow up in a funny family?
Yes, I honestly did. Everybody in my family’s funny. Being funny was highly encouraged in our family, I think. My dad would tell jokes, and my mom would tell stories and imitate everyone within the stories. I think everyone is born with humor, but your life can beat it out of you, sadly, or you can be lucky enough to grow up in it.
When did you first think, I want to do this professionally?
I watched “[Rowan & Martin’s] Laugh-In,” and I impersonated people for my dad, and that would really make my dad laugh.
Do you remember who you would do?
I did all men. I did James Mason, Paul Lynde, Alfred Hitchcock. Then in high school we had a great theatre-arts teacher who didn’t believe in a stiff school curriculum. She just wanted to let us fly and be free and create. In a weird way, it was great training for Second City, where we created our material.
Then my brother worked in a small theatre, called Global Village, in Toronto, and met a girl named Gilda Radner, God bless her. They worked together, and they dated, and Gilda would come home to our house for dinner.
How long did your brother date her?
I think it was two years. It was all Gilda as far as opening up my world to Second City. That’s where I met Eugene and Marty [Short] and Andrea [Martin], all the people I ended up working with years later. Gilda got into Second City, and I auditioned and got a job as a waitress [in the theatre] instead. Then John Candy hired Marcus—my brother—and me for the touring company, and Joe Flaherty made me the understudy for Gilda.
You had to go on for Gilda?
The Second City Chicago cast and the Toronto cast had a trade, where the Chicago cast, which included John Belushi and Bill Murray, played the travel stage, and our cast—Dan Aykroyd, Eugene Levy, John Candy, Gilda, and me—we played their stage. I think it was a four-week trade, and the first two weeks Gilda did the show. Then she got a job in “National Lampoon,” and I got to dare to take her place. I basically imitated her for months.
Were you scared?
Yes. My crutch was, in improvs: when in doubt, play insane. Because you didn’t have to excuse anything that came out of your mouth. It didn’t have to make sense.
So all your first characters were unhinged.
Yeah.
When did you first take note of Eugene?
When I was waitressing. We tried dating, actually. There’s nothing sexier than making each other laugh. I think everybody tried dating everybody.
But it didn’t work out between you and Eugene.
I’m so glad it worked out that way. We probably wouldn’t be working together if we’d gone longer on the dating. Really, it was, like, one or two dates. That’s it.
Back then Eugene and I were never really a “team.” Just somehow we’ve grown together in these years.
“SCTV” came after that. You wrote for that show, too. How did that feel?
When you’re writing, you’re putting thought into what you want to express, and then you come up with it—it comes to you. When you’re improvising, it’s the same thing. You’re writing. You just say it out loud right then, instead of saying, “You think this might work?” The best improvisers, all the people that were great in the Chris Guest movies, are all great writers.
Really?
Oh, yeah. Every one of them writes, because you have to have a sense of the scene. It’s not just standing there doing jokes. You’re working with everyone else. You have to listen. You have to be ready to move in whatever direction the strongest character’s taking you. You have to have a sense of where you’re going and what needs to be accomplished.
Catherine O’Hara.Photograph by Cait Oppermann for The New Yorker
Some of those early characters of yours, how did you develop them? Are there any that are still dear to you?
Lola Heatherton was a character I did in “SCTV.” Everybody had a Vegas character except me. I really didn’t have one. Andrea [Martin] was doing one called Lorna Minnelli. She was Liza and Lorna and Judy all at once. We would play with the names. I was called Lola Heatherton because I had seen Lola Falana, the singer who used to be on “The Tonight Show” and “Merv Griffin.” I stole the stupid lip-quivering thing from her, and the kitten-with-a-whip thing from Joey Heatherton.
