Dan Levy On If We Can Expect A ‘Schitt’s Creek’ Reunion
Ew, David, can you believe it’s been nearly 10 years since we paid our first visit to Schitt’s Creek?
The beloved Pop TV comedy debuted on Jan. 13, 2015, introducing viewers to the Rose family—played by father-son duo Eugene Levy and Dan Levy as well as Catherine O’Hara and Annie Murphy—a wealthy AF brood forced to move to the small town when they lose all their cash.
Over the course of its six-season run, Schitt’s Creek became a pop culture force to be reckoned with—the little Canadian show that could, if you will—thanks to its deceptively layered characters, knockout performances and zippy one-liners.
After its series finale aired in 2020, Schitt’s Creek dominated at every awards show, with the main quartet sweeping the acting categories at the Emmys in addition to an Outstanding Comedy series win. Then, at the 2021 Golden Globes, the sitcom won Best Television Series, Musical or Comedy, proving everything was really coming up roses for the Roses.
And while gossip is the devil’s telephone, there’s no harm in a bit of reminiscing.
Or noting that Dan hasn’t completely ruled out the possiblity of a revival.
“I love the fact that people want more,” Dan told E! News at the Hollywood premiere of his film Good Grief in December 2023, “but it has to beat what we’ve done, and that’s a tough thing to do. So until the idea comes to me, who knows?”
He added, “But if it means people go back and watch the show from the beginning, not a bad thing.”
We would be pleased to RSVP as pending already fully seated. Until then, we’re spilling secrets about Annie’s iconic “A Little Bit Alexis” performance, the unexpected romance between David and Patrick (Noah Reid) and which fan-favorite almost dropped out of the show before it began filming in 2014.
Go ahead and keep reading for 25 secrets you might not know about Schitt’s Creek. We love that journey for you.
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1. Fans of MTV’s The Hills likely remember Dan Levy as the co-host of the live after show. And in a 2015 interview with Out magazine, Toronto native Dan revealed his reality TV experience inspired Schitt’s Creek. “It really just started with me being in Los Angeles, knowing that I wanted to write,” he explained. “I had been watching some reality TV at the time and was concentrating on what would happen if one of these wealthy families would lose everything. Would the Kardashians still be the Kardashians without their money?”
2. The concept of Johnny Rose purchasing a small town was inspired by a real celebrity: Kim Basinger buying a town in Georgia in 1989.
3. While he had never turned to his famous father for help prior, Dan told Variety he decided to ask Eugene Levy to partner with him on the series. “I went to him with this idea of a wealthy family losing their money and said, ‘Do you want to work on this with me?” And he said, ‘Yes,'” Dan recalled, leading him to believe that the request “was something he was hoping would happen a lot earlier.”
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4. And the decision to approach Catherine O’Hara—Eugene’s dear friend and SCTV colleague—for the part of Moira was the patriarch’s idea, though she was hesitant to say yes, initially only agreeing to do the pilot presentation as a favor for her longtime collaborator.
“When the show got picked up, we had to go back to her and ask,” Dan explained to Variety. “She was really reluctant—justifiably so. It was a big unknown, and television is a commitment. He ended up asking Eugene to give her one last call and tell her to just give it one season. Clearly it worked. Canadian actress Annie Murphy rounded out the Rose crew as David’s sister Alexis.
5. Catherine came up with Moira’s signature accent, which she attempted to describe via e-mail. “I was saying, ‘Eugene, I don’t want to sound like a human,’ basically,” she told Variety. During the show’s run, she would often flower Moira’s dialogue with the help of Foyle’s Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words.
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6. The genesis of Alexis’ iconic “Ew, David!”? “The ‘ew’ was written into the show just because I say it a lot in my real life,” Dan revealed. “I try not to think about the audience too much in terms of expectations. I feel like the minute a show becomes aware of itself, I start to separate. I just like hearing Annie say, ‘David.'”
7. The small Canadian town in which Schitt’s Creek is filmed, Goodwood, Ontario, has seen a surge in visitors thanks to the hit show. “We did dingy up the town tremendously,” Dan told NPR.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the creator had to take to Twitter to ask fans to stop visiting the town for now, writing, “Visiting right now is a threat to the residents’ health and safety. Thanks for understanding.”
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8. For a long time, fans speculated where exactly Schitt’s Creek was set, as it’s never specified on the show. But in 2018, Dan confirmed the fictional town is in Canada. “We are a Canadian show, so inherently it is a Canadian town,” he told Buzzfeed News. “We’ve never spoken about it, so I don’t like to necessarily pinpoint it anywhere. But for the sake of the hard copy, I guess it’s set in Canada.”
9. The creators had to fight to keep the show’s title when they pitched it to the network, eventually printing out white pages to prove it was a real last name. “I don’t even know if there were people in Canada, there were just a couple in Ireland,” Dan told Entertainment Weekly. “Thank God for those people, because we got to keep our name.”
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10. One of the series’ most iconic moments was the reveal that Alexis had tried to become a reality star and had recorded a theme song for her series. A true gift to fans, the single “A Little Bit Alexis” went on to become a viral hit. And Annie actually wrote the song herself, with help from her husband Menno Versteeg, determined to make it “a banger” in the vein of something Britney Spears or Paris Hilton would’ve released.
“She has always sort of been surrounded by musicians and new people and producers and said, ‘Yeah, let me see what I can do,” Dan told EW of tasking his costar with the assignment. “Now, I’ll get tweets from predominately gay men who are in clubs and the song will play. I think gay bars and clubs are like playing it, which to me is the greatest compliment.”
11. In addition to writing the earworm, Annie also revealed she choreographed Alexis’ dance number, which she didn’t show anyone prior to filming the scene. “I kept my fingers crossed that it would be sufficient,” she explained to EW, “and then I went in and did it.”
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12. Annie originally auditioned for the role of Stevie Budd with Saturday Night Live veteran Abby Elliott (daughter of Chris Elliott, a.k.a. Roland Schitt) playing Alexis in the pilot presentation. When Abby couldn’t continue with the show due to scheduling conflicts, Annie beat out hundreds of actresses to land the part, even dyeing her hair blonde for the role. We love that journey for her!
13. Before Emily Hampshire was cast as Stevie, Lindsay Sloane played the part of David’s deadpan bestie and Johnny’s motel partner. But Emily delivered quite the memorable entrance during her audition, with Dan recalling at the 92Y Talks in 2018 that she “came in and immediately said, ‘I’m sorry, this is going to be terrible.'”
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14. Prior to Noah Reid landing the role of Patrick Brewer, the character’s sexual orientation, longterm status and exact role in David’s love life was TBD. “That’s a really great thing when you’re making TV, when you write characters that you haven’t yet cast, and then you cast them and they work, and they don’t just work but they work with other characters and bring out the best in other characters,” Dan shared with EW. “It was a really pleasant surprise. And we knew early on that this character was going to stick around.”
15. David and Patrick’s first kiss in the season three finale was initially scripted with Patrick making the first move. But after going over the scene with a friend and talking about their respective coming out experiences, Dan realized it needed to be the other way around. He re-wrote the scene the night before filming, reading the new dialogue to Noah on the way to set.
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16. Patrick’s swoonworthy “Simply the Best” cover in season four—one of the series’ defining moments—was simply scripted as “Patrick sings a surprisingly beautiful cover.” But the acoustic arrangement was all Noah’s, with the singer-songwriter spending weeks working on it before finding his take on the Tina Turner classic.
“If we didn’t have that song and he didn’t do it the way that he had,” Dan told EW, “I think that scene would not have had the kind of weight that it did and the ability to change my character in the way that it did.”
17. Moira’s emotional response to the performance was genuine Catherine, who couldn’t make it through the scene without crying. So Dan kept it in the final cut, explaining he wanted to highlight “the candidness of television…it was a moment that, for me, meant a lot because it was a parent supporting their kid.”
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18. Of course, David later returned the favor to Patrick, with his own dance performance set to the same classic song. Dan admitted that filming the scene as an actor was “the most unsafe I’ve ever felt…that level of unabashed, just lack of consideration for how this is going to look or appear on film.”
To help get through it, Dan and Noah split a bottle of prosecco with their lunch prior to filming. Initially, Dan had intended for the scene to play for laughs, but realized it meant much more when the cast and crew on-set were moved to tears: “I thought I had done it wrong and I think at times there are moments that come out of when you’re making TV that are unexpected.”
19. While it had a small cult following when it aired on Pop TV, Schitt’s Creek didn’t reach the height of its popularity until it hit Netflix in 2017. Variety reported that the show was the streaming giant’s second most-watched acquired series behind The Office.
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20. Moira and David’s Christmas duet was originally supposed to be a solo performance for the Rose family matriarch, but Catherine insisted the pair perform together. “The look in her eyes when she told me was like, you’ll be doing this.” Dan explained to EW of the season four moment. “And I said, ‘When will I ever get this opportunity again to be immortalized on television?'”
21. Dustin Milligan, who played Alexis’ love interest Ted, initially met Dan years ago when they auditioned for the same role—one neither of them received.
While there isn’t a lot of improvisation on the set, Dustin revealed he started adding puns into his dialogue. “I didn’t ask anybody if I could start doing these puns, I just started doing it,” he said. “But I got the crew to laugh a little bit… I don’t know why Dan decided to let me keep doing it, but he did.”
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22. Putting together the Rose family’s bougie and often trendy to the point of ridiculous wardrobe on a small budget was no easy task, with Dan telling EW, “It was a year-round experience of mining eBay and consignment stores and vintage stories and all these different consignment apps.”
23. Throughout the series’ run, Catherine wore more than 100 different wigs as Moira, a character trait the star actually asked to be written into the show. “I know two women who changed wigs throughout the evening, she explained, adding she would sometimes use her friends’ names if there wasn’t a scripted moniker for the wig.
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24. Dan had initially envisioned five seasons for Schitt’s Creek, but changed his game-plan after, as he revealed, “We were given the opportunity to do two seasons, and I thought, ‘Okay, I can tell the end of this story in 28 episodes.'”
25. But he hasn’t ruled out the idea of returning to Schitt’s Creek or revisiting the Rose family in the future, explaining to EW, “I feel really confident that we’ve really mined everything we could. But the world doesn’t explode at the end of it. If there is something that comes up down the line that feels compelling enough to bring our troupe back together and continue to tell a story, so be it. I’m not one to lay down the iron fist and say ‘This is it forever.’ This is just it for now.”
As he put it to E! News in December 2023, “I love the fact that people want more, but it has to beat what we’ve done, and that’s a tough thing to do. So until the idea comes to me, who knows?”
This story was originally published on Friday, Sep. 18, 2020, 3 a.m. PT
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