Dan Levy is as proud as a Canadian is permitted to be about Schitt's Creek's Emmy haul
Appearing on Thursday’s Late Night With Seth Meyers, Schitt’s Creek creator, co-star, and scion of Canadian comedy royalty Dan Levy was wearing a cool sweater. Not David rose cool, naturally—sort of a serene abstract pastel floral pattern—but nice. For those who’ve watched the now-completed Canadian comedy series, Levy’s David isn’t shy about going for all the attention, something Levy himself stated unequivocally is not his jam—especially when hobnobbing with celebrities on the red carpet, as he’s done a few times in his previous career as MTV presenter. “I’m not Ryan Seacrest,” is how Levy put it of what he describes as his disastrous run haranguing overdressed celebs about who they’re wearing and so forth.
That’s as may be (and undoubtedly a good thing), but Levy is going to have to get ready to be the one getting peppered with questions on his way into the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards on September 20th. That’s when he, dad Eugene Levy, lifelong family friend Catherine O’Hara, TV sister Annie Murphy and seemingly everyone else involved in making Schitt’s Creek (which snapped up a whopping 15 Emmy nominations in all for its final season) will stride down the red carpet in all their Rose family finery. What’s that? Pandemic? Right, right. Yeah, they’ll all be watching in his dad’s backyard over a few beers for the remotely televised ceremony. Still, that sounds a lot more comfortable and fun, honestly, and is certainly in keeping with the whole “famous rich people slumming it in the Canadian countryside” Schitt’s Creek aesthetic. And Levy himself isn’t complaining.
“You could not ask for a better end to such a lovely story for all of us,” Levy told Meyers, not just of the slow build to Emmy juggernaut of his little series that could, but also for his decision to end the show when it was—empirically, at least according to awards show acclaim—at its peak. “I’ve jumped off of one too many shows to know what that’s like,” said Levy of his all-too-familiar disappointment with once-beloved series that have hung on far past their primes, “I’m always a fan off shows that start and finish really strong.” For Schitt’s Creek fans, that aptly summarizes the series’ six-season exercise in pitch-perfect (cue the Jazzagals) deconstruction of the standard sitcom high concept. (“Absurdly rich family loses it all and has to live in a rural town—in a motel, even!”) Both the characters’ journeys and the show’s valedictory Emmy (and GLAAD Awards) acceptance provided what Levy called gratefully, “a storybook ending.”
Even the loyal—not to say rabid—Schitt’s Creek fanbase has been pretty cool about his choice to wrap the series up. After all, while the show has become an international hit, it and its original and most vocal fans are thoroughly, constitutionally Canadian. Enthusing to Meyers about the “lovely group of people” who’ve been on board with Schitt’s Creek since the humble beginnings (“Our budget is still the first 15 seconds of Mrs. Maisel,” Levy joked/not joked), he said that his initial fears of a fan backlash proved mostly unfounded. “I was expecting a kind of angry response,” admitted Levy, but who found, instead, his fellow Canadians’ response being characteristically—not to say stereotypically—restrained. Honestly, the sentiment “Thats too bad and we’re very upset, but how are you?,” Levy says he and his extended TV family got was about as good as it gets, as far as modern-day entitled-to-the-point-of-hostility fandom goes.