Yahoo News Dan Levy on Crafting the Perfect ‘Schitt’s Creek’ Finale Wedding
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There are a number of reasons why different cultures believe rain on one’s wedding day signifies good luck for the future of the marriage — from the idea of providing a clean slate to start a shared life to the notion that wet knots are hard to untie. In the “Schitt’s Creek” series finale, a thunderstorm upends plans for David (Dan Levy) and Patrick’s (Noah Reid) nuptials, but is the catalyst that creates the most meaningful version of the event.
“The teamwork and the love got them through all the hardships of the day,” says Levy, who in addition to starring in the show also co-created it and served as showrunner.
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A last-minute location switch to the town hall, and the need for David’s mom, Moira (Catherine O’Hara), to step in as officiant when their haikuist could no longer travel in, meant all the show’s central characters pitched in to help.
“It was such a payoff to not just a relationship, but also it essentially acted as just how much growth this family experienced over their handful of years in the town,” Levy says.
Levy wrote the final season with some misdirects as to where the wedding would happen, knowing that in the end he wanted to “ground it in a place that we’d come to know and love over the years.” He admits he spent a lot of time on Pinterest, as well as “Googling ‘sophisticated floral arrangements’” to explain the look he was going for to his production design team.
But he spent even more time working out each character’s vows. David’s proved to be challenging, he says, because he’s “such a closed-off person. How do you write something for somebody who’s so unwilling to be forthcoming with their emotions?”
The answer was, in part, “cracking David open” before the wedding.
David finally admits to his friend Stevie (Emily Hampshire) that he has lived much of his life trying to impress people and is concerned about being seen as a joke. Stevie tells him that he has everything he needs, and “that was the final push for David” in terms of “setting him up to be a high-functioning partner in a relationship,” Levy says.
From there, Levy thought about what each man needed to say to the other that he had never said before — “and what do we need as an audience that we’ve never heard before?” While for both “it came down to honesty,” he continues, for Patrick it was as simple as singing a few lines of Mariah Carey’s “Always Be My Baby.”
“It was a really nice dramatic device, but also something that spoke to his understanding of David and fearlessness when it came to not caring what other people thought about it,” says Levy.
Earlier in David and Patrick’s relationship, Levy wrote what he thought was a simple joke about David only saying “I love you” to his parents and “one time at a Mariah Carey concert,” which led to Patrick telling him, “Well, you’re my Mariah Carey.” The moment, which came from “winks and nods” to Levy’s own experience as a “very big Mariah Carey fan” caught on with viewers and the elusive chanteuse herself. While Patrick’s vows callback to their first “I love yous,” Levy notes it was also important that the specific song choice and lyric chunk used “spoke to their experience” and was recognizable for the audience.
Dan Levy’s Inspirations:
Writers’ room style: “Egoless.” From a design perspective, spaces that don’t “lead to a lot of distraction so we are able to focus.”
Favorite writers’ room snack: “Low-cal popcorn packs.”
Mood music: “Every season I would have a different playlist to inform the tone of the season.”
How he breaks writer’s block: “It’s important to shift your focus and hopefully things will jostle out of that shift. And knowing when to move on — I feel like there’s a really fine line between getting stuck in a room trying to problem-solve and deflating a room.”
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