Dan Levy Returns to Television with a New Comedy
Six years after Schitt’s Creek concluded its Emmy-winning run, Dan Levy is back on television – and this time, he’s stepping into the world of organized crime. The Canadian actor has returned as creator and star of the Netflix comedy series Big Mistakes. In this new venture, Levy plays Nicky, one half of an inept brother-and-sister duo who accidentally stumble into the mob world after stealing for their dying grandmother. He proudly claims that this show requires nerves of steel.
“Someone told me they needed a Xanax after watching,” Levy tells us with a grin. “And I thought: that’s about right!”
A Shift from Warmth to Crime
For fans expecting the warm, small-town comforts of Schitt’s Creek, this surprising pivot may come as a shock. However, for the 42-year-old Levy, it was exactly where he wanted to go next. “I had six seasons of a warm, fuzzy, cuddly show, and my natural curiosity was to go in a completely different direction,” he explains. “I wanted to keep what I loved – the family dynamics and the flawed and funny characters – but explore something completely different.”
That “something” required Levy to ask himself an unusual question: how would he fare as a criminal? The answer came quickly: “Horrible,” he confesses. “Right off the bat!”
The show’s documentary-style look – handheld, loose, almost uncomfortably real – was a conscious decision to keep the crime tension credible. “We threw a lot of the conventional elements of TV-making out the window, and the effect is exactly what I wanted,” he says. “The show constantly feels real and alive.”
A Star-Studded Cast
Big Mistakes features a stellar cast, including scene-stealing comedian Taylor Ortega, who plays Nicky’s sister, Morgan. However, Levy had only one person on his wish list for the role of Linda, the duo’s formidable grandmother: Laurie Metcalf. “I wrote her a letter, sent a script, said a little prayer, and hoped for the best,” he says, adding that it was Metcalf’s earlier work on Roseanne that always inspired him. “When you send something to someone you revere so deeply, you really just have to let it go.”
The positive response came within 48 hours. “I screamed,” he tells us. “Out loud.”
Levy describes the show as brimming with big swings, but it all feels “genuinely satisfying and never cheap.” It’s also a welcome distraction for Levy, who is still grieving after the January death of his beloved Schitt’s Creek co-star, Catherine O’Hara, at age 71.
Thoughts on a Possible Schitt’s Creek Reboot
O’Hara and Dan’s father (and Schitt’s Creek co-creator), Eugene Levy, started their careers together in the Canadian sketch comedy series Second City Television and co-starred in four Christopher Guest films, including Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman, before starring as John and Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek. On Instagram, Dan Levy paid tribute in characteristically eloquent terms: “What a gift to have gotten to dance in the warm glow of Catherine O’Hara’s brilliance for all those years. Having spent over fifty years collaborating with my dad, Catherine was extended family before she ever played my family. It’s hard to imagine a world without her in it.”
When questioned recently on CBS Sunday Morning about the potential for a Schitt’s Creek sequel, Levy simply said that while he had thought about it, he couldn’t move forward with it without O’Hara. “No, not now,” he said in the interview. “You can’t.”
For now, Levy is keeping busy with Big Mistakes, a show he equates with a theme park ride. “You get on the rollercoaster, buckle up, and just let gravity do its thing,” he declares. “Xanax is optional.”
