Dan Levy ('Schitt's Creek') on the emotional final season: 'Love is not something you can buy'

hello gold derby fans well he is the multi-talented star behind shits Creek which just finished its last season I'm Sam Ekman of gold Derby and I am very excited to be sitting with Dan levy thank you so much for joining me today and when I when I say multi-talented you really are you wear so many hats on the show all the house literally that's like seven you wore one today thank you if you saw the hair that was going on under this I need a haircut badly and I do not trust myself enough to cut it with the buzz you know the razor I have upstairs so we will we will do with what we have I have the same quarantine here a problem we're going to be Jimmy Neutron soon but you're the you're the creator you're the producer star writer director so when you enter this season wide the decision to end it with season six and what was kind of the most important thing for you to accomplish in the final season yeah I mean you know are as strange as this is to say I mean our our show has never really been about business and I feel like you know the the question of why don't you continue on and on and on and on I think really is about at its core the business of television and for us the show was really about making sure that season after season we were telling stories that meant something that continually changed our characters that you know that grew in some way and for me this was never going to be one of those ten to twelve season shows this was always going to be small and and the minute that I felt like we were you know even even had the potential of overstaying our welcome was the time that we should go so I was ready to end after season five and then we were very fortunate enough to be offered five and six together and I felt like well that gives us 28 episodes to wrap this up carefully and thoughtfully and and it just felt right I was always aware of how far we could take these characters without you know overextending ourselves and and six seasons is a great number and I felt like we would be able to end our season just as strong if not stronger than when we started so that was really at the root of all the decision-making um you know the opportunity to make more seasons was obviously there and it was a tough decision because I love our cast and I loved the time that we got to spend together that was the hardest part of it all was saying you know saying no to more seasons specifically you know because the the experience of making the show was so great but I think you know I respect the viewers and the time that they put into watching the show too much to ever take advantage of their loyalty and to me I felt like anything beyond Season six we would be risking potentially stretching it too thin and and I think when you commit to a show as a viewer I know at first hand you know you want to feel like the show is respecting your time and it just felt like you know get out while you're ahead and leave people wanting more hopefully yeah you you co-directed a few episodes you code to the finale but the season 6 premiere was the first time I think that you directed on on your own smoke say yes so what was it that about that that felt right to sort of try to tackle that on your own um III think with everything that I do I'm always aware of how how much time I and energy I need to actually do it properly I don't want to rely on people to do my job for me so the the finales of seasons 5 & 6 felt really important to be a part of as a director and I felt like I had enough bandwidth to co-direct along with my friend and rusev adeno who who I actually met in film school so that was a full circle moment to bring him on to the show and to be able to work with him so closely but the serie the season premiere of season six I would be able to you know the pre-production all happened before we started shooting I didn't have any responsibilities as an actor at that point because we were just starting the seria the season so I knew that I had the time to put into preparing to direct that by myself and it was a fun episode and I knew it inside out I wrote it and you know it was a an absolute joy we fortunately have a crew that is so supportive and encouraging and you know I had a camera guys in season 3 tell me that I should start directing and it just never felt right because I I wasn't there yet I didn't have the experience I didn't have the experience you know from a production standpoint to really feel like I could do a better job than someone that we would hire and I think that's an important thing to know especially when you have the freedom and the opportunity to do these things it's really just for me quality over quantity and quality over opportunity or the potential of opportunity and and by season six it felt like I was ready to do this on my own and I enjoy both processes really you know equally I loved doing that episode by myself but I also loved the collaboration between Andrew and I and I think this this season finales of five and six are two of my all-time favorite episodes so we'd a really good time making it and unfortunately we just have a cast and crew that are so close and so excited to be working on the show I mean it's such a it really feels like like summer camp and it's it's kind of corny to discuss because you know it's like there's no real headlines in saying everybody loved each other and we all got along but that's really how it was I mean it was a truly special time that we all got to have with each other three months out of the year every year for the past six years well I think you know one of the reasons that's why I one of the reasons that's so fun to watch is because it has so much heart to it and a big part of that and this season is the story of David and Patricks marriage and I always appreciated how kind of carefully crafted that relationship was from a writing standpoint so did you always know the ending the end point of where you wanted those two to end up I knew pretty early on I probably by season four I knew that it was going to lead to this and you know it's I think when you're given the opportunity to write about your own community it's important to be really thorough and really careful about how you depict the relationship and the truths and the and the kind of foundation of you know nonchalance in a way I've like I've been I've grown up and have been so used to seeing members of the LGBTQ community you know for presented in film and television as like life lessons or as butts of jokes or sort of reduced to caricature and I felt like we have the opportunity in this show to tell a love story that's really meaningful but also speaks to an experience that you know myself and my friends have gone through so it was it was particularly important for me to make sure that those stories were told with the kind of accuracy and care that that I would want to see had I not been in charge of it and it was quite remarkable to see kind of the effects that that had on the viewers and and the in a way the kind of shift that a lot of our viewers were writing into us about about you know the relationships that they have had with their parents that improved or friends or family members that that understood them a little more clearly because of the show so those are sort of unexpected highlights for me in terms of what I've taken from from this whole experience and I love you know as emotional as as his finale is with Norah read and and Patrick the reason he stays sort of like Stevie helps him discover that reason he stays and that's almost as emotional as the the wedding scene why do you think because you and Emily have such great chemistry why do you think that friendship is so successful and so fun to watch in the show um well I think we've again we've just when when you have a cast that just kind of clicks in and they all like each other and they're all about you know coming to work for all the right reasons and there's no egos that you have to sort of navigate on your way to work it makes her a very open and honest and free environment and I think that goes for our whole cast and and Peart and you know that that is obviously set by the standards that my dad and Katharine brought to work I mean they it was so about every day they would show up just wanting to make the best possible television and I think when you have you know that the top of a Call Sheet settings such a professional and respectful and graceful standard for everybody else nobody can really step out of line and I think what that's done for all of our characters is allowed for a level of kind of freedom to experiment and an ease with performance that you might not get had that set in a little more tense and I know that Emily and I are very good friends personally and have become even closer now that the you know the show's six strong I think that scene represented so much for both of our characters and I think it was also the second to last day of our entire series shooting our series so there was a lot of emotion just inherently in the air but that scene was one of the hardest scenes that I've ever had to write mainly because it's probably the most dramatic the show has ever gotten and yet at the same time it felt necessary to give those characters that kind of moment and particularly for David who I feel like has this kind of archness to him we've never read mean we've seen him vulnerable but we've never really gotten to the core of it and it felt like the whole show for him was leading up to this moment where he finally admits that his whole life has just been about trying to to prove that he's not a joke to people and you know I think when you're working with talented actors in my case Emily did such a beautiful job as a scene partner it just made it for that it made for a kind of magic in that scene that was really fun to shoot and and fun to edit yep and in thinking about would you say that that's kind of the way David's grown the most because all the characters really have fantastic marks and grossed over the whole thing when he looked back at how shallow and dependent on money they were in the beginning yeah how do you think that he has grown the most in the series when he looked at you know I think inherently the whole show was built on this idea that love is not something you can buy it's something you have you will eventually learn is kind of intangible and so you know obviously the first season of our show was constructed so that you could get a sense of just how vapid and reliant on materialism our characters were but the structure was always built in there that if we were given multiple seasons we would slowly but surely unravel and peel back the layers on on who these people are but also what they really mean to each other and I think that kind of through line through the show led to moments of a poignancy I think between these characters and understanding what they really meant to each other and I think for David his whole life was about trying to get people to like him and unfortunately that didn't really work out particularly in love so to meet someone in this small town who really sees him for the peculiar little strange being that he is it let his guard down for the first time and I think he was able to kind of take a breath and realize that life is is better when you don't have to try so hard and I think that really led to some pretty emotional revelations for him poor thing and you know as an actor it was just so much fun to to act because I think you know the show was so fun in the sense that we got to do really great comedy and and not just great comedy but we got to that great comedy with Catherine O'Hara I mean it was a master class just in in that regard but then also to get moments of emotionality was was a fun thing to play as well and also incredibly challenging I think the biggest challenge for me and as a writer and also as an actor on the show was just constantly being aware of the fine line between sentimentality humor and like heavy-handedness and never falling into that kind of Corning waterlogged sentimentality we always tried to keep it sharp and keep them keep the poignancy in the show as kind of electric as as the comedy so you know that is really a testament to our writers room and to our cast I think a moment that really exemplifies that as the wedding scene when Kathryn Harris trying her best to make it through I had heard a couple seasons ago that well moment though talked about her performance in that scene it was there are there are millions of moments over the course of shooting the show where I kind of levitated out of my body and just watched her work but that scene in particular and there's there's a small handful that I really cherish because I've been I was able to be in that scene with her and really experience it firsthand the work that she did was so extraordinary and the fact that that character even though she is dressed to the nines never took away from David's moment even though that's kind of in her DNA to do it was it took such skill and such finesse on Catherine's part to just ride that line and and cry for like an entire day and she did she literally cried through every take because she wanted everybody in that room to get the same kind of performance so that they can do the best work and that I think speaks volumes to her just to her work ethic and an unbelievable skill yeah absolutely I was gonna ask about that about crying because I had heard a few seasons ago when you filmed when Noah sings the best hmm knew that she had trouble keeping it together during that take and I wondered if she had similar trouble because it is such heightened comedy as well as you said it balances the emotion was that a hard day to get through yeah it was the last day that we shot on our sets so you know looming in the air over that scene was the understanding that we will wake up tomorrow and the Rosebud motel and cafe tropicale in the town hall and the motel lobby are all not going to be standing and that was so strange and disorienting and emotional for all of us and then I think to see us all dressed up have the whole cast together in one room there was a magic in the air and it was something that as a showrunner gave me such a sense of joy because there was you just knew it was gonna work and I think when you're putting together a last episode of television you're constantly crossing your fingers and holding your breath that it's going to work and something about that scene something about the energy of the scene and the performances and just how it all clicked together that was kind of the first indication that I got that I think this is going to work I think we've created something really special in this last episode and and certainly you know the tears need the kinds of emotion that lives in that scene it was it was a beautiful combination of us saying goodbye to these sets that we've come to know and love over the years and also you know as characters celebrating something that means so much to - to the show yeah and an interesting thing really happened to your show sort of midway through its run because you wind up on Netflix and all of a sudden there's this huge surge of people that discover it who hadn't before and we have you know like David becomes part of our cultural lexicon now and you finally broke through at the Emmys last year when they caught on as well and you were now made for comedy series and your dad who has won an Emmy for writing before about his first nomination as an actor which is exciting so what was that whole experience like it was so surreal because I think when you start out as small as we did it's never in your minds awards and kind of the level of recognition that we've received over the past two years that just doesn't exist because you're so aware of the limitations of your show and for us it was about making great television that that we could at the end of the day you know lay our heads on our pillow and say to ourselves we made some really funny comedy today that's the kind of closure that we were looking at I mean my dad and I after the first season really said to ourselves you know even if people don't watch it even if it gets taken off the air we made something that we loved and that's all that really matters at the end of the day and unfortunately the cherry on top was the fact that people started watching it slowly but surely and that our trajectory seemed to be the polar opposite of what I think a lot of television experiences which is like a really strong start and then you're just constantly hoping to keep that that viewership for us it was the total opposite you know we went we had years swear yeah you know anybody was really watching it in Canada it was a success because you know my dad and Kathryn have a history of just being kind of beloved up there with with se TV playing such a huge part of the Canadian cultural entertainment landscape but to slowly have growth in America and then the you know the ultimately the Emmys it was it was really something that caught us all off-guard and it was you know for me as the creator of the show knowing how small our budget is knowing how limited our resources were knowing how hard our team worked it was really I mean it was emotional because the Emmy for for comedy series in particular was was really a representation of the work of our crew and our cast and to be able to see you know this Canadian crew that worked so hard with such little money be recognized you know at the height of American television was truly was truly a surprise and a pleasant one at that so you know it continues to be this strangely surreal world that we tend to to find ourselves living in now the fact that people stopped me on the street and just scream you David from their cars is both very disorienting and a huge compliment I don't think it'll ever really settle in with us and I wouldn't have it any other way and I also think when you don't have any expectations on your show you're able to really just focus on the work and and you know to have these nominations in our fifth season our first Emmy nomination and our fifth season is quite insane to think about what a wonderful wonderful thing well we if it's a great ending to a great show and hopefully you pick up some more this year so we'll see everyone watching it at home make sure you subscribe to gold Derby and keep up to date with us there any season and Dan thank you so much for talking with me thank you for having me appreciate it [Music]

Channel: GoldDerby / Gold Derby

Views: 31,607

Rating: 4.9532166 out of 5

Keywords: Emmy nominations, Emmys 2020, Schitt's Creek, Emmys, Annie Murphy, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Dan Levy, Pop TV

Id: mwag-DdVhJ8

Length: 21min 33sec (1293 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020