Dan Levy on Turning Down Role of Ken in “Barbie”: 'That Was a Bad, Bad Day' (Exclusive)

The star — whose new movie 'Good Grief' is on Netflix now — barely missed out on a chance to be in 'Barbie.' "Does that haunt me at night?" Levy asks. "Sometimes"

Dan Levy knows people still think of him as David Rose sometimes.

His character in Schitt's Creek — the 2015-2020 show about a formerly rich family exiled to a small, rural town co-created by Levy and his dad, Eugene — was a pandemic juggernaut that swept the Emmys in 2020. It launched Levy as a style and meme star. (The GIF of his TV sister saying, “Ew, David,” is still popular. “Folks would even scream from passing cars, out their windows at me, ‘Ew!’” he tells PEOPLE with a laugh.)

Levy is fine with people sometimes mistaking him for David. It's coming from a good place, he acknowledges: “If you create something that lives with people to the point where they forget who you are, I will never take offense to that.”

Related: How Dan Levy’s Very Real Grief Inspired His New Movie: ‘I Worried I Was Not Grieving Properly’ (Exclusive)

Levy, 40, reveals that he almost got to play another, perhaps a little more beloved, iconic role, one which would have lived deep in the consciousness of everyone last summer: one of the Kens in the 2023 blockbuster Barbie. Sadly, he had to turn it down due to scheduling conflicts.

“Logistically could not make it work despite desperately trying to," he explains. "So, yeah, I guess I was I was technically unavailable to to do that."

Levy says he is a huge fan of Barbie director Greta Gerwig.

"I think Greta had such a like wonderfully bizarre and and magical aesthetic idea of of what that movie was," he says of the Oscar nominee. "I would have loved to play in her world. I think the I think she is one of the great, young auteurs of our time."

The FOMO was real and lingering, Levy says.

"Does it haunt me when I sleep at night? Sometimes. It's not like it isn't like one of the biggest movies of all time. That was a tough, that was a tough day," he recalls.

Related: Dan Levy Makes His Sexiest Man Alive Issue Debut, Jokes 'This Form of Sexy Is a Niche Market'

Good Grief, his new film, which he wrote, directed and stars in, is now streaming on Netflix. In it, Levy moves beyond Schitt’s Creeks’ theatre of the absurd and deep into the shadows of the bereft. He plays an artist who is getting over the death of his husband (played by Luke Evans) via a trip to Paris with his two best friends.

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“As someone who’s single a lot, your friends are the loves of your life.” Levy says. “The friends I have are lifers. I love them dearly, to the point where I wrote a movie about that love and how it can save us in the hardest of times.”

Good Grief is now streaming on Netflix.

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