Catherine O'Hara Wants Her Funeral to Be a Dance Party

This month kicks off the final season of Schitt’s Creek—so we get 14 more episodes of Moira Rose and her killer wardrobe, indeterminate accent, and glorious vocabulary. So what has she learned during her lifetime of hardships and successes? Read her answers to our questionnaire, below.

1. Best career advice I’ve gotten: Make sure you go into any job (and, really, into any relationship) on the right foot. It’s near impossible to change people’s perceptions of you once you’ve committed.

2. Most gracious response to rejection/career setback: “It’s God’s will.”

3. Least gracious response to rejection/career setback: “But I wanted it!”

4. Change I’d like to see in my industry: I’d like to see mid-budget films come back. Only tiny-budget independents or nine-figure blockbusters are being made now.

5. How did you make your first dollar?: Babysitting. I was 13. There were five kids in that family. When the parents came home, I was asleep and all the kids were awake. But I still got paid!

6. Who do you admire and why?: I admire and am grateful for anyone who gets off their ass and does good for others in need, or who fights for a worthy cause. The rest of us are all talk, no action.

7. Last thing I binge-watched: HBO’s Succession. I caught up a while ago and now look forward to each new episode. The characters are despicable but somehow likable thanks to the show’s great writing and acting.

8. Song that always makes me cry: “When She Loved Me,” by Sarah McLachlan for Toy Story 2. Oh my Lord, it kills me.

9. Song I’d want played at my funeral: Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up.” It’s not so much about the lyrics; it just sounds like a great dance party.

10. First album you bought?: Bruce Cockburn’s “High Winds White Sky”.

11. Food I’m not ashamed to admit I love: Salt and vinegar chips. They’re especially good with a rum and Ting.

12. Cocktail of choice: My homemade margarita, with jalapeño simple syrup and Casamigos Reposado. Rocks, no salt.

13. What every woman should try once in her lifetime: Skinny-dipping. Preferably in a lake.

14. How would your perfect day begin?: With a cup of tea, getting ready to do something fun.

15. How would your perfect day end?:With my family, having done something meaningful.

16. One thing I’m exceptionally good at: Giving my unsolicited opinion. Ha.

17. One thing I’m epically bad at: I got the strap in Grade 3 for putting Toronto (my hometown) in Iceland on a geography test. Corporal punishment doesn’t work. I’m still not sure where anything is.

18. Something better in theory than in practice: “Smell this and see if it’s still good.”

19. Store I can’t leave without buying something: Big Lots in California, USA, Dollarama in Ontario, Canada.

20. Something nice I did for myself recently, because hey, why not: I had a wonderful facial. I must do that more often.

21. The beauty essential you’d have to pry out of my cold, dead hands: A toddler’s toothbrush. It cleans teeth without messing up your character’s lush red lipstick.

22. Advice to a woman with a broken heart: “They don’t deserve you.”

23. Relationship advice to my younger self: That “sexy” dark, brooding guy isn’t a higher-level thinker. Turns out, he actually has nothing on his mind.

24. The craziest thing I did for love: I learned to cook. Had I known I’d still be making dinner this many years later …

25. What my high school boyfriend/girlfriend would say about me: Although I had a lot of poorly-chosen crushes in high school, I never had a steady boyfriend. I guess I was too busy hanging out and goofing off with my lovely girlfriends.

This story appears in the February 2020 issue of Marie Claire.

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