Eugene Levy and Noah Reid on emotional Schitt's Creek scene about David and Patrick
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Schitt’s Creek season 6, episode 7, “Moira Rosé.”
This week’s standout episode of Schitt’s Creek has a triple threat of story lines: Moira (Catherine O’Hara) returns to the infamous Herb Ertlinger Winery, where she and David (series co-creator Dan Levy) taste-test more wine than they can handle in an attempt to honor Moira with a new vintage. Alexis (Annie Murphy) lures the other ladies in town to join Elevate, a manic stair-climbing workout class that turns out to be a pyramid scheme. And Patrick (Noah Reid) and Johnny (Eugene Levy), left behind to watch a baseball game at the motel, awkwardly attempt to get through “the talk” — a sweet and emotional encounter that ends in a triumphant double high-five.
Patrick is alone at the motel (thanks in part to a Japanese toilet David ordered for his apartment) when Johnny, egged on by Roland (Chris Elliott), drops by to force him into a heart-to-heart about David. Though Johnny’s attempts to bond with his future son-in-law are initially thwarted by Patrick’s focus on the game and Johnny’s own reticence, the pair eventually get their chance to chat.
“It has a lot of heart to it,” Eugene Levy says on the latest episode of the EW On Set: Schitt’s Creek podcast, which takes listeners behind the scenes of the show’s final season. “Going into any kind of future-in-law [situation] and hearing how much they care about your son or daughter… as a dad, that’s what gets you right by the heart and grips you. So that was a very tender, nice scene that I had with Patrick.”
Although Patrick is engrossed in the game at first, he kindly helps Johnny when he sees his future father-in-law struggling to broach the subject. “Patrick sort of takes it upon himself to actually initiate the talking and try to put his put his mind at ease,” Reid says of the scene. “Eugene was just so, so present and so beautiful in that scene. It wasn’t scripted, I just sort of felt it. And I just said to him, ‘You’re a great dad.’”
It’s one of the few times Schitt’s Creek viewers have seen Patrick and Johnny together alone. “These are the kind of moments that that, you know, provide a really nice emotional underbelly to the show, to all the comedy that that goes on,” Levy says. “These are the moments that strike a chord, I think, in a big way with the audience.”
While Levy says he has not yet been in a similar situation as a father, the work he’s done as Johnny is great preparation for the veteran actor: “The show sometimes helps you in real life, which is kind of an interesting concept too, about your character and what your character does for you and what you do for your character.”
Though Twyla, played by Sarah Levy (Dan’s sister and Eugene’s daughter), was busy sweating on the stair-climber in another story line, the actress says the Johnny and Patrick scene brought tears to her eyes, and that she sees a lot of her interactions with her father in how Johnny treats both David and Alexis. “Johnny Rose is one of the characters that my dad has played that’s probably the closest to who he is — minus like wearing suits every day,” she says.
Listen to the full episode of EW On Set: Schitt’s Creek above, including more from all the Levys, Reid, Murphy, O’Hara, and Emily Hampshire (Stevie), who is so personally obsessed with cults that her own friends have questioned whether she’s in one — or leading one. You can also listen on Apple or Spotify, or wherever you stream podcasts.
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