Schitt’s Creek cast reveal behind- the-scenes secrets

The cast of the sitcom about a once-wealthy family forced to relocate to a quirky small town have shared some secrets about the show.

Later this year, Dan and Eugene Levy’s beloved sitcom about a once-wealthy family forced to relocate to a quirky small town will conclude after six wonderful seasons, admirably choosing to walk away on top rather than wear out its welcome.

The first five seasons are available to stream on Netflix Australia, but there’s no word yet on when we’ll get episodes from the final season.

The sitcom’s four main cast members, Dan Levy, Annie Murphy, Eugene Levy, and Catherine O’Hara, recently sat down for an hour-long interview with Richard Lawson in which they revealed a medley of behind-the-scenes info on the show.

The Decider picked out the most interesting takeaways from that chat and from a few other interviews the cast have done over the years.

Schitt's Creek cast: Annie Murphy (Alexis), Catherine O'Hara (Moira), Eugene Levy (Johnny) and Dan Levy (David).

MOIRA’S VOICE AND THAT PRONUNCIATION OF ‘BABY’

Dan Levy told Vulture that Catherine O’Hara didn’t reveal Moira’s accent until the first day of filming.

“I remember being so thrown off by it because it’s this vaguely European accent that has no origin and yet is from everywhere,” Levy said. “I remember really having to hide my enjoyment of it and actually do my job as an actor.”

Moira’s vocabulary is eccentric to say the least. For example, two of her lines are: “Underneath the brambly tartan blousant is a chrysalis bursting with potential”, and, “Easier said than done, John, when your only husband is longing for his epistle-writing inamorata”.

Speaking to Vulture, O’Hara revealed that she personally helped sculpt her character’s rich dialogue.

“I just love having an excuse to look up arcane words,” she said.

The actress turned to a book called Foyle’s Philavery: A Treasury of Unusual Words for inspiration, she said.

“Daniel and the writers would write me dialogue and I’d go through my book and rewrite it and make it that much more Moira,” O’Hara told Vulture.

One of the most entertaining words Moira says in the show is “baby”, which she pronounces “bebe”.

O’Hara explained to Vulture: “I said ‘bebe’ as a joke or a mistake the first time. Once I hit on ‘bebe’ and got a laugh from the crew, that was it.”

The show is sadly coming to an end.

ANNIE MURPHY WROTE THE LYRICS TO ‘A LITTLE BIT ALEXIS’

During the table read for season 5’s The Hospies, the script simply said, “Alexis performs A Little Bit Alexis”. Inspired by Noah Reid’s rendition of Simply the Best, Annie asked Dan if she could take a stab at writing the now-famous banger.

The rest, as they say, is history. Murphy penned the lyrics and her husband (Menno Versteeg) and Nixon Boyd provided the music. Levy as you can imagine, was a big fan of the finished product.

“When you have the luxury of having actors that are also so enthusiastic about the work that they’re doing that they want to write those songs, and they want to write those medleys, it’s a joy,” Levy said.

Additional fun fact: The idea that Alexis had starred in her own reality series titled A Little Bit Alexis was in the original Schitt’s Creek show bible.

Alexis performs A Little Bit Alexis.

DAN LEVY ON HIS DECISION TO END SCHITT’S CREEK AFTER SEASON 6

“I thought we were originally going to end after (season) five, and then we got the option to get two seasons picked up,” Levy said. “I’ve always been aware since day one of overstaying your welcome, which can happen on TV. I would rather leave people with a joyful idea of what our show was and what it meant to them. I’d rather leave that in the fans’ minds than be the show that you’re like, ‘Yeah, after (the seventh season) I dropped off’.”

EUGENE LEVY AND CATHERINE O’HARA ON THE THESIS OF SCHITT’S CREEK

“In a nutshell, it’s stories about who people are and not what they are,” Levy said. “It’s about the family learning to become a family, which was always at the core of what this show was about.”

Added O’Hara: “It’s about four people who become a family, who always were meant to be, but we actually learn to be a family.”

DAN LEVY WROTE THE FINAL EPISODE OF SCHITT’S CREEK IN HALF A DAY

“The last episode of our show, I wrote in half a day,” Levy said while talking about the series finale. “And I feel like that’s because we had exceptional writers who helped me to make this show what it is, put it on a track that was moving slowly and steadily, and that last episode wrote itself.”

Continued Levy: “Series finales I feel like people always remember and they compare them and they write about them, and I tried to shut all that out. But at the same time, there was a sense of relief in knowing that if it came to me this easily that we must have done something right in the process of putting the building blocks in order for this to feel so seamless.”

Dan Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Annie Murphy and Eugene Levy. Picture: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

ANNIE MURPHY ON THE NOTE THAT HELPED HER UNDERSTAND THE CHARACTER OF ALEXIS

“When I got the breakdown for the audition itself, it kinda outlined the character. But at the very end it said ‘like a young Goldie Hawn’ and that kinda shifted things for me,” Murphy said.

“To me, a young Goldie Hawn is this effervescent bubbly light, but she’s also intelligent and grounded in her own way and insightful, and so it was really important for me to play Alexis as a fully fleshed out human being.”

DAN LEVY ON HIS FAVOURITE THING TO WRITE ON SCHITT’S CREEK

Unsurprisingly, Alexis’ crazy misadventures with celebrities (Esquire recently published a detailed list of every Alexis story) were Levy’s favourite thing to write on Schitt’s Creek.

“Every character was a wonderful challenge in their own right, but mining the stories, mining my own useless database of celebrity gossip history; I knew that reading Us Weekly would come in handy at some point.”

DAN LEVY ON THE LINE BETWEEN BEING TRUTHFUL AND BEING SCHMALTZY

One of the most fascinating aspects of the cast interview was Dan Levy’s articulate response to how Schitt’s Creek delivers genuine emotional scenes without crossing the line into schmaltz.

One of the best examples Levy gave was the season 2 finale in which the Rose family exchange “I love yous” for the first time. For a “normal” family that’s not a huge deal, but in the Schitt’s Creek universe this was a well-earned moment of authentic sentimentality.

“With the growth of these characters you were able to realistically add in a layer of sentimentality, but that had to be earned and that took time,” Levy said.

“When you have an ensemble as extraordinary as the one we’ve managed to put together, you really can hand them things and trust that things will be handled delicately and thoughtfully and carefully and that schmaltz is never going to enter the equation because schmaltz exists when an actor can’t pull off the line.”

Continued Levy, “I think we were always aware of the line between over-sentimentality and heavy-handedness and truth, and that was always something our brilliant team of writers and I would always weigh when we were dealing with the heavier moments: Is this truthful or is this schmaltzy? Are we being honest and real in this moment or are we pushing it too far?”

Dustin Milligan, Annie Murphy, Catherine O'Hara, Jennifer Robertson, Sarah Levy, Eugene Levy, Emily Hampshire, Dan Levy and Noah Reid at the SAG Awards. Picture: Gregg DeGuire/Getty Images for Turner

ANNIE MURPHY CAME UP WITH ALEXIS’ HAND GESTURE AFTER STUDYING PARIS HILTON AND KIM KARDASHIAN

Murphy said she watched “short clips” of Hilton and Kardashian “because I couldn’t do whole episodes”. She noticed how they carried their handbags and decided to use it for her character, saying, “Late one night I was like, ‘What if there was no handbag and I just flipped my wrist over and added another wrist?’”

EUGENE LEVY IS A PROUD DAD

The show is quite the Levy family affair. Eugene Levy plays Johnny Rose, his son Dan Levy plays David and his daughter Sarah Levy plays Twyla.

During the podcast, Annie Murphy and Catherine O’Hara teased proud papa Eugene Levy about his tendency to go over to the monitor and watch Dan and Sarah perform their scenes.

“Like an insane dance mum, not knowing the lines but, like, really there with them,” Murphy said. “I mean, that didn’t stop. That was a season 1 to the end of season 6 scenario, which we just loved to watch.”

DAN LEVY WEPT THE FIRST TIME HE HEARD NOAH REID’S PERFORMANCE OF SIMPLY THE BEST

Noah Reid composed his stunning rendition of the Tina Turner hit Simply The Best.

“I went to (Noah) and I said, ‘Do you want to try this?’” Levy said, talking about the fan-favourite scene. “And in my mind I knew that he could do it; I didn’t know what he would bring me … and then he sent it to me in the middle of the night and I wept quietly alone in the dark.”

Catherine O’Hara said on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen that she cried during every take when filming the moving scene.

Noah Reid performs Simply The Best.

THE ORIGINS OF ALEXIS’ PRONUNCIATION OF ‘DAVID’

“It just kinda happened,” Annie Murphy said. “It just came out and then I just ran with it; I just drove it into the ground. I would speckle many sentences with many Davids.”

How many times has Alexis said the word “David”? By my count, she’s uttered that magic word 224 times over the first five seasons.

MOIRA AND DAVID’S CLASSIC ‘ASBESTOS FEST’ DUET WAS ORIGINALLY SUPPOSED TO BE A SOLO PERFORMANCE

One of my favourite stories from the 92nd Street Y chat is how O’Hara asked Dan to perform the now famous “Asbestos Fest” medley with her. It was originally written to be a solo piece, but O’Hara thought it’d be better to perform with someone.

The one person who objected? Eugene Levy, who lovingly told O’Hara that Dan had “too much on his plate”.

“It’s true, but you laid it out so perfectly,” Dan said. “I got a voice memo from Catherine with my harmony part in it, and I was like, ‘All right, I guess we’re gonna do this’.”

David and Moira perform their duet.

AND FINALLY: THE BEST MOIRA WIG

It was Catherine O’Hara’s idea for Moira to wear a variety of outrageous wigs. And according to Levy, the best wig is still to come.

“There is a look for Moira that is my all-time favourite Moira look we have ever done,” Levy said near the end of the interview. “And the fact that it happens in our last season is everything I could have asked for. So when it comes to wigs, my favourite wig has yet to be seen.”

This article originally appeared on The Decider and was reproduced with permission