Eugene Levy Worried That Dan Levy Couldn’t Pull Off ‘Schitt's Creek’
As the discussion over Hollywood’s “Nepo Babies” continues to rage online, Eugene Levy has made the rare move as a show business parent to publicly admit that he wasn’t sure if his son was cut out for the family business.
On today’s episode of the SmartLess podcast hosted by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes, the SCTV star admitted that he wasn’t always convinced that his son, Dan Levy, would succeed in his vision of making a hit TV show with his famous father. Though Schitt’s Creek eventually became yet another Canadian comedy show to take the continent by storm, the elder Levy shared that he had “nightmares” about his eventually Emmy-winning progeny flopping in an industry as volatile as entertainment.
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Meanwhile, Tom Hanks had opposite nightmares about his son Chet succeeding in the rap game. Both fears were unfounded.
"We started this thing when he said, 'Do you want to work on a show?' I said, 'Yeah, that would be good,'” Levy said of his son’s pitch that became Schitt’s Creek – in show business, parents apparently react to their children pitching television shows the same way normal parents react to their kids asking if they can try out for the soccer team. “I never thought that would happen," Levy confessed, but the ball was already rolling for Levy the Younger.
The Levys took the concept that Dan once described as, “Would the Kardashians still be the Kardashians without their money?" to market, eventually selling the show to Canadian network CBC Television. Despite the greenlight, Eugene found himself anxious about working with his son who didn’t have the experience running and writing a TV show on that level – Levy told Smartless that he lost sleep over some unnerving suspicions.
"At one point I had a nightmare, I woke up in a cold sweat thinking, 'What if he doesn't have it?'” Levy told his hosts, “I mean, we're gonna keep working on this idea and if I know that he doesn't quite have what it takes, how long are we gonna keep working on this as a project?" Levy dreaded the day he would have to tell his beloved son that he “just doesn't have it,” and that humor isn’t necessarily genetic.
Thankfully for the Levys, that fear was unfounded – Schitt’s Creek was a commercial success and a critical darling which added an impressive haul of accolades to the family trophy case. Audiences adored the ditzy, dysfunctional but ultimately loving family of sheltered aristocrats – and the show wasn’t half bad either.
