Catherine O'Hara was one of the funniest human beings to ever grace this planet. It just took most of the planet a while to realize it.
Oh, you probably knew O'Hara's face, if not her name, long before her Emmy-winning turn as Moira Rose on Schitt's Creek. But unless you were a real comedy nerd, odds were you thought of her as Macaulay Culkin's mom in Home Alone or as Winona Ryder's conceptual artist stepmother in Beetlejuice. Maybe you saw her in one of the mockumentaries she made with Christopher Guest and with her once-and-future costar Eugene Levy: Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind. Or, if you're old enough, you first saw her and Levy together (with John Candy, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, and other comedy greats) on SCTV, Canadian television's answer to Saturday Night Live.
O’Hara, who died this week at the age of 71, was great in all of those, a comedic artist who had total command over two instruments: her face and her voice. There were times when that face seemed elastic, as if you weren't seeing the same performer from sketch to sketch or project to project. She could be just as convincing playing has-been sexpot Lola Heatherton as she was as a dowdy woman recording a long-distance phone commercial lamenting that no one calls her anymore. Her voice could be brassy and pretentious, like in Beetlejuice or on Schitt's Creek, but could also be soft and sweet, like in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
In A Mighty Wind, Guest, Levy, and all their usual collaborators dial the silliness up to 11, while O'Hara plays things entirely straight. She is one half of Mitch and Mickey, a ’60s folk duo whose creative and commercial success was built on their romance. When the relationship ended, the band disintegrated; Mitch, played by Levy, was institutionalized because he couldn't cope, while Mickey eventually remarried a catheter salesman. Mickey feels regret over the breakup, or at least guilt over what happened to Mitch. When they reunite for a public television special, Mickey is terrified of what will happen when they reach the moment in their biggest hit, "A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow," where Mitch always paused to gently kiss her. It's a stunning, sincere performance by O'Hara, who keeps the entire movie grounded, leading up to the climax where the special's other reunited folk acts gather backstage to see whether the kiss will happen. Good luck making it to the end of the scene without crying. The moment where Parker Posey and Jane Lynch tear up listening to O'Hara sing hits especially hard today:
But A Mighty Wind, like all the Guest films, was viewed as an ensemble success, or an achievement first and foremost by Guest himself. And O'Hara was a brilliant utility player for much of her career: someone whose presence in a movie or TV episode made you smile and feel reassured something good was about to happen, even if you weren't 100 percent sure where you'd seen her before. She was always working, always funny, always someone other actors loved to work alongside. But she was already in her 40s by the time she made Guffman, and in her 50s by the time she made the last of the Guest quartet, For Your Consideration. Showbiz isn't kind to women of a certain age, especially if they haven't hit it big by the time they get to that age.
Instead, O'Hara did the impossible: She became a star after turning 60.
Her particular stardom was as unlikely as the success of Schitt's Creek itself. Created by Eugene Levy and his son Dan, it was made on a shoestring budget in Canada, a joint venture between the CBC and obscure American cable channel Pop. To keep costs down, especially at first, much of the action took place at a run-down motel, one of the few possessions left to Eugene Levy's disgraced businessman Johnny Rose after his business manager embezzled the family fortune. The move to the tiny titular town was hard on all of the Roses. But it was especially tough on Moira, who still thought of herself as a global icon, even though her six-and-a-half-year stint on the soap opera Sunrise Bay was long in her past. (Also, she barely remembered doing parts of it. As Johnny once reminded her, "You were drunk most of Season 3. And half of Season 4. End of Season 5.") Most of her other gigs were less dignified—a Lifetime movie costarring Joyce DeWitt from Three's Company, playing Lady Macbeth on a cruise ship—but Moira was a classic fake-it-long-after-you've-briefly-made-it kinda gal. She carried herself like she was the second coming of Meryl Streep in this hick town.
The whole grand dame routine could have been insufferable, even with the crackling dialogue the Levy men and the show's other writers gave O'Hara to deliver. But she found sweetness inside the acidity, even before the show began making the Roses accept their humbled circumstances and their new neighbors. She made you root for Moira to somehow triumph in her big comeback vehicle, The Crows Have Eyes 3: The Crowening.
Schitt's Creek didn't get much notice when it was just on the CBC in Canada and Pop in America, but it became one of the biggest beneficiaries ever of the Netflix Bump. By the end of the sixth and final season, Schitt's Creek became so big, and so beloved, that it made television history as the first comedy to ever sweep every single category for which it was nominated at that year's Emmys.
And suddenly, O'Hara was everywhere: awards shows. Talk shows. Big-budget movies (including the long-in-the-works sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice). There were even opportunities to show off her non-ridiculous side. As Seth Rogen's mentor on The Studio, she was largely tasked to be the straight woman, in a role that was for the most part as understated and down to earth as Moira was a self-caricature. Season 2 of The Last of Us brought her in for a multi-episode stint as a therapist with a grudge against Pedro Pascal's Joel. At a time when work should have been completely dried up, she was bigger and busier than ever, getting to show sides of herself that the audience, and the business, didn't expect.
That's what makes the loss feel especially cruel. She had toiled for so long, sometimes in anonymity, sometimes in brilliant support of others, only occasionally at the forefront. And then suddenly, the entire world opened up to her. She could have done anything, and did. But only for a few years. This was the kind of career moment that Moira Rose would have killed for, and it feels like the actress who played her barely got to enjoy it.
But at least she got that brief moment when everyone finally knew all that she could do, and everyone, in the business and outside of it, showed O'Hara the love they'd always had for her. The Schitt's Creek episode "RIP Moira Rose" had the family dealing with an online rumor that Moira had died. Moira is pleased to read online comments praising her, then upset when a single reporter comes to town to cover the story—a reminder that whatever luster she had from Sunrise Bay had long since faded.
Over the last decade of her career, Catherine O'Hara didn't lack for attention or opportunity. Still, she had so much more that she could have enjoyed, and that she could have given us. When I first heard the news, I hoped it would turn out to be an "RIP Moira Rose" situation. But no.