“I’m going to be a blubbering mess when it all ends because I love these people so, so much.”
Rose DommuDuring last week’s episode of Schitt’s Creek, our ew, Davids turned to aw, Davids when, at the end of a hike gone awry, Patrick (Noah Reid) asked David (Dan Levy) to marry him. David, barely winded after the world’s longest piggyback ride, accepted, pausing only to make sure the four gold rings (an exact replica of the silver rings he’s worn since the show began) were 24 karat.
When he was breaking David and Patrick’s engagement in the Schitt’s Creek writer’s room, show creator and star Levy knew the proposal had to fit the...unconventional characters. “Obviously it had to be something that caught people off guard. It had to be kind of romantic and yet personalized to the couple,” Levy tells Out from the show’s set. It was during those conversations in the writer’s room that they realized David would need to be proposed to somewhere he’d never want to be proposed to. “Outside in nature was the inevitable conclusion.”
For Levy, the scene was surprisingly emotional to shoot. “I just felt so much empathy for my character who had clearly been through a string of terrible relationships in the past to have finally found someone who is actively choosing to spend the rest of their life with him. It was a very lovely and emotional storyline to play.”
On a comedy as outlandish as Schitt’s Creek, moments as touching and grounded in reality as the proposal are few and far between, but the show’s penultimate season has been surprisingly heartfelt in how it’s handled David and Patrick’s relationship and particularly Patrick’s journey as a queer person. Earlier this season, the character came out to his parents in a scene Levy knew he had to get right.
“I wanted it to be respectful. I wanted it to feel real and reflect, in a way, feelings that I had experienced,” Levy confesses. “I found writing that episode to be emotional, because I think a lot of it came from my own experience, which is what you do as a writer and then to see it on its feet, to date, I think it's the most meaningful episode that I've ever written and really one of the most special episodes we've ever done...The focus is: does this feel grounded, does it feel real? Does it feel authentic? And will people who have gone through similar experiences see themselves in it.”
After our conversation, Levy will return to work directing the first episode of Schitt’s Creek’s final season and his time directing solo. Levy, who created the show with his father, is both grateful they’ve made it this far and that they have the privilege to end on their own terms, something most shows don’t get. “A lot of shows get canceled before they had planned,” he adds. “So to be able to decide when we want to end it, it's a rare opportunity and obviously I'm going to be a blubbering mess when it all ends because I love these people so, so much.”
But having the end in sight is bringing its own kind of excitement to the process. “Everyone's seizing the day so to speak. We're just wrapping up our first week on set. We have a great time on the best of days and we're having a really, really good time now. It's going to be a sad one when it all comes to an end. But I think we've done the show justice and I hope we're going to make some episodes that the fans will really love. Hopefully.”
Now that David and Patrick are engaged, and with the show coming to an end, could that mean fans might be in store for a wedding?
“There is now an engagement...so I would hope that at some point we might get a wedding,” Levy says, and I can almost see him winking over the phone. “I can't confirm or deny.”
And might David be...a bit of a Bridezella?
“I think that sort of speaks for itself,” Levy laughs. “He's certainly not chill on the best of days. So his own wedding, I don't think will necessarily be a casual experience for anybody, him in particular, but it is a fun prospect of seeing how he'll handle that...Bottom line, not well.”
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Dan Levy on David’s Engagement and the End of ‘Schitt’s Creek’
0Dan Levy on David’s Engagement and the End of ‘Schitt’s Creek’
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