'Schitt's Creek' cocreator Dan Levy explains how running the writers' room like an 'open therapy session' created some of the most moving moments on TV
- With "Schitt's Creek" airing its final episodes, Business Insider sat down with showrunner, writer, and star Dan Levy to learn more about the writing process that turned an out-of-touch family into one of the most heartwarming on TV.
- Levy - a first-time showrunner who was also the head writer during early seasons, and stars as David Rose - hired writers from different backgrounds, including playwrights, essayists, and sketch-comedy writers.
- He started each season with a goal for where the characters should end up and found the best stories came from the writers' own personal experiences.
- The writers' room was "almost like an open therapy session," Levy said, adding that the freedom the writers enjoyed came from the network, CBC, which gave very few notes.
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Warning: This post contains spoilers for seasons 5 and minor spoilers for season 6 of "Schitt's Creek."
When "Schitt's Creek" cocreator Dan Levy was putting together the writers' room for the show, now in its sixth and final season, he wasn't just looking for sitcom writers.
Levy hired playwrights like David Read West, seasoned TV writers like Michael Short from the sketch-comedy show "Second City Television," and personal essayists with plenty of writing experience but little prior work in television.
Levy - a first-time showrunner who was also the head writer during early seasons, and stars as David Rose - wanted writers who could draw on their own life experiences to develop a comedy that was grounded in reality, despite centering on an absurdly wealthy family, the Roses, who suddenly lose their money and are forced to rebuild their lives in a small Canadian town, called Schitt's Creek, that they bought years earlier as a joke.
Levy's unconventional approach to building the writers' room helped turn "Schitt's Creek" into the cult TV hit it's become. The audience for the series, which airs on CBC in Canada and Pop in the US, has steadily climbed since its 2015 debut, exploding after a 2017 deal put past seasons of the show on Netflix.
"Ew, David," a phrase made famous by Levy's on-screen sister, Alexis Rose (played by Annie Murphy), is now a meme and a popular t-shirt saying. You can buy Rose Apothecary's best-selling lip balm at a New York shop that launched a collection inspired by the general store from the series. And a North American tour offering an inside look at the show sold out this fall, as did pop-up experiences promoting the sixth season.
With "Schitt's Creek" airing its final episodes, Business Insider sat down with Levy in New York to learn more about the writing process that turned an out-of-touch family into one of the most heartwarming on TV.
The writers' room was like an 'open therapy session'
Being a novice head writer may have helped Levy, who found the best stories came from the writers' real-life experiences.
Levy would start each season with a general idea of where he wanted the characters to end up during it and let the writers work their ways to those moments.
"You have to create a space that feels safe enough for people to share their ideas," Levy said, wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, a teal sweater, and navy slacks that distinguished him from his monochrome-clad character, but for the same immaculately cropped locks. "I would approach every day with a goal while at the same time knowing that we can afford to go on tangents and we can afford to have conversations."
Levy wanted the show to feel grounded, as though each character had earned their progression during the course of the series. That's where having writers with a range of experiences came in. The writers used their own relationships as inspiration.
"It becomes a place that's almost like an open therapy session," Levy said. "When you're talking about relationships or a certain type of relationship, or a certain hiccup or hold up in a relationship, someone inevitably has a story that will relate to that. You share that story and then inevitably someone else has another story and suddenly you've spent half an hour talking about your past relationships with a room full of people that you've only known for a little while."
In season five, Levy knew his character, David, and his pragmatic, level-headed partner, Patrick, should get engaged. But Patrick felt almost too perfect up until that point.
"I wanted to show a crack in that," Levy said. "I wanted to show some vulnerability and I wanted to show some, some struggle."
That led to Patrick's coming-out episode, where David invites Patrick's parents to a surprise party for his birthday and learns that the family didn't know Patrick was gay. David is hurt that Patrick hadn't told his parents about their relationship, but also understands what a difficult moment it is. With David's support, Patrick comes out to his parents by the end of the episode.
"I felt like, okay, they've been through this together, I feel like we have earned the proposal now," Levy said, adding that the episode was one of the most meaningful he's written. "It's interesting when give yourself that kind of goal, what comes out of it."
The writers had near autonomy in creating the show
Levy said he and the writers had near autonomy when writing the show. The network, CBC, rarely gave notes or interjected in storylines.
"We didn't really have to answer to a lot of people," he said.
He credits that, in part, to his father and "Schitt's Creek" cocreator Eugene Levy. The Levys sold CBC on "Schitt's Creek" with a 12-minute presentation pilot that starred Eugene Levy and frequent collaborator Catherine O'Hara. Dan Levy said the network was excited by the pairing and didn't interfere much.
"That's really rare and something that I knew was rare way back when," Levy said. "When you're afforded that level of freedom, for us it was about, okay, well, we can't f--- this up. We have to do the best job we possibly can, while at the same time taking advantage of that freedom and being able to tell stories that represent all different types of people."
The early seasons of "Schitt's Creek" laid the groundwork for the bigger stories, like David and Patrick's engagement.
The series pilot thrusts the Rose family into an entirely new world where they have to do learn basic things, like cooking and cleaning up after themselves, as well as form relationships with people that weren't centered on money and how to cope with being on the opposite end of an economic equation.
In one episode, Eugene Levy's character, Johnny Rose, who had owned his own business before losing his wealth, has to come to terms with applying for unemployment, and humble himself further by asking for a ride to the unemployment office.
By season six, Johnny, David, and Alexis, are all running their own businesses and in happy, healthy relationships in Schitt's Creek, while matriarch Moira Rose, (Catherine O'Hara's character) is rekindling her acting career.
"The intention of the show from the very beginning was always that love is so much more than anything you can buy," Levy said, adding that every moment since was about helping the characters discover that. "It was always about how do we tell stories that bring out our characters, how do we tell stories that reveal something about our characters instead of how do we put our characters in a quirky story that's going to be funny for a minute, but ultimately not service the characters."