Catherine O’Hara an ‘icon’? The ‘Schitt’s Creek’ star says she got lucky with her career

Catherine O’Hara had quite the memorable March.

She was front row at the Loewe fall/winter show at Paris Fashion Week — “the first time I’d ever been invited to go to Paris” — joined a speakers’ list that included feminist icons such as Gloria Steinem, Billie Jean King and Hillary Clinton at the Forbes 30/50 Summit in Abu Dhabi; and got a shout-out from President Joe Biden while attending a gala dinner for the U.S. head of state hosted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa.

The Canadian actor and comedian sounded exhilarated by it all during a phone call last week from her home in Los Angeles: it was a thrill to meet Clinton, she said, who “was just laughing and smiling and lovely and friendly. Billie Jean King is just the greatest, most fun character and an inspiring woman. And Gloria Steinem I just love, love love. She’s still so very cool.”

So yes, O’Hara was a little star-struck, which might seem odd considering that, thanks to “Schitt’s Creek,” she herself has become a big star, more famous than she already was after a career of some 50 years. But if there’s one thing that came through clearly during a half-hour conversation, it’s that O’Hara hasn’t let success go to her head.

She laughed very loudly when I asked her if she felt like an icon and practically shouted, “No!” — even though she was about to return to her hometown of Toronto to receive the Academy Icon Award at the Canadian Screen Awards.

“You know, I’m not gonna try to justify it,” O’Hara said of the award. “I just think it’s a lovely gift. Very kind strangers, for some reason, decided to give it to me. So thank you.”

If you’re a fan of O’Hara’s, that reason will seem self-evident.

Long before Moira Rose of “Schitt’s Creek” joined the pantheon of great comedic female characters, O’Hara made her mark in numerous TV shows and movies, the kinds of properties that live on in pop culture and individual imaginations.

Think “SCTV,” the 1970s sketch comedy series that also kick-started the careers of Eugene Levy, John Candy, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, Joe Flaherty, Martin Short and Andrea Martin.

Or the film “Beetlejuice,” in which O’Hara played haunted-house matriarch Delia. Or “Home Alone” and “Home Alone 2,” in which she was Kate, the mother who accidentally leaves Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin behind. Or her indelible characters in the Christopher Guest movie mockumentaries “Waiting for Guffman,” “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind” and “For Your Consideration.” And that’s just a fraction of her credits.

It’s a career, according to O’Hara, that has been put together scene by scene and character by character rather than through any kind of planning.

“I’ve never had this kind of foresight or ambition. I’ve lived in the moment,” she said. “But, you know, it makes me realize how lucky I am, and very grateful to still be working and still be working with someone like Eugene (Levy), who I met on my very first job.”

That first job wasn’t in showbiz as much as “showbiz-adjacent” when O’Hara waitressed at the Second City in Toronto, where Levy was part of the cast.

“I watched Gilda onstage,” she said — meaning revered American comedian Gilda Radner — “and I thought, ‘Oh, what I would give to be able to do that.’ I imitated her for a while until I could come up with my own character. But yeah, it was a day-to-day thing: I want to come up with a good scene, I’m gonna come up with a new character. I didn’t have any long-term plan.”

The roots of that unplanned career go back even further to growing up in a large, funny household in the west end of Toronto.

“My parents had just the beautiful gift of always finding the humour in everything,” said O’Hara, 69, who was one of seven children.

“Everybody in my family’s funny and I think you’re really fortunate if that’s encouraged from childhood, because it’s such a great way to survive in this world … to find a way to laugh: laugh at yourself and others, of course.”

But a young Catherine might never have considered comedy a way to make a living if not for a particular guest at some of the family dinners: Radner, who began dating O’Hara’s older brother Marcus after they met at a downtown theatre where they both worked.

“I never would have seen being silly, funny, playing characters, doing impersonations, which I did with my friends and family, as maybe a possible job, let alone a career, without Gilda,” O’Hara said.

Radner got a teenage O’Hara and her friend Robin Duke, now another well known comic actor, tickets to the 1972 production of “Godspell,” in which Radner co-starred with such luminaries as Levy, Short, Martin, Victor Garber and Jayne Eastwood.

And then O’Hara followed Radner to Second City, eventually understudying her and Rosemary Radcliffe before replacing Radner in the company when the latter left for New York, where she would become one of the founding cast members of “Saturday Night Live.” (Radner died of ovarian cancer in 1989.)

Second City became O’Hara’s “university of comedy.”

“The people that I got to work with? I learned on the job with those people: John Candy, God bless him, and Eugene and Dan Aykroyd, and Gilda and Rosemary Radcliffe, then Marty and Andrea, and Dave Thomas and Joe Flaherty … I like to think I made the most of it and I worked hard, but that’s quite the opportunity.

“I’m still trying to practise everything I learned there. Everything. All the basics of anything I do came from there, from those people.”

Of course, it’s impossible to put O’Hara and Levy in the same paragraph without thinking of “Schitt’s Creek,” the wildly successful Canadian sitcom in which they starred as the matriarch and patriarch of a family of one-per-centers who lose everything and have to start over in a small town.

The CBC series won nine Emmy Awards, including acting trophies for O’Hara, Levy, his co-creator son, Daniel Levy, and Annie Murphy, who played their children. It also netted O’Hara individually a Critics’ Choice Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, six Canadian Screen Awards and a Golden Globe.

But for O’Hara it was very much a team effort.

She came up with the idea for Moira Rose’s unusual way of speaking, her multiple wigs; her high-fashion, black-and-white wardrobe (inspired by brewery family heiress Daphne Guinness), but “when do you ever get to work with people that say yes to all these ideas that haven’t been quite worked out? And then they made them work,” she said, referring to Eugene and Daniel.

“It’s one thing for me to say, ‘Hey, what if I dress like (Guinness)?’ It’s another for them, especially Daniel and (costume designer) Debra Hanson, to come up with that wardrobe, or Ana Sorys to come up with those wigs and the writers to show up with great dialogue,” O’Hara said.

And it’s true, as O’Hara told me once before, that she was initially reluctant to sign up for potential multiple seasons of “Schitt’s Creek” — it eventually lasted six — rather than move from job to job, as she had been used to doing.

“I never said I was a genius, OK? So I did take a moment to consider it first. I’m so glad Eugene tricked me into it.”

It’s a decision that is still paying dividends, she figures.

“Every job I’m offered now, I think, that’s because of ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ or every opportunity I have, to go to the fashion show, or to meet Prime Minister Trudeau and President Biden, or Hillary Clinton or Billie Jean King, I think, it’s all ‘Schitt’s Creek,’” she said.

Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Culture section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo

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