Shortly after making history at the 2020 Emmys, where the final season of his hit Canadian sitcom Schitt’s Creek took home nine awards (including four for Levy: in acting, writing, directing, and producing), the multi-hyphenate took a break from showrunning and spent some time just being an actor and director. Schitt’s, a heartwarming comedy about a filthily rich family who are forced to move to the titular small town after losing all their money, blessed the affable Canadian with a wave of industry goodwill, and he parlayed that into big-budget studio fare like Haunted Mansion and smaller queer indies like Happiest Season. He took on a memorable arc in Netflix’s Sex Education. He played Andy Warhol in Unfrosted. Schitt’s provided him enough financial stability to selectively “handpick” his projects, and he relished the opportunity to show up on set with nothing to worry about except his lines. “As an actor, I am the greatest joy to have on set because of the gratitude I have for only having to do one thing,” he says with a laugh. “I know what it takes to do the acting, directing, showrunning, and producing [all at once].”

And yet, as an openly gay actor, he noticed a “demoralizing and soul-crushing” trend in the types of roles he was put up for. “You’d read these horrible scripts that were, like, 10 straight guys in a room writing a gay character,” he sighs. “It was like, I guess I’ll just tap-dance my way into whatever this is and give you at least a grounded take on this stereotypical quirky gay assistant.”

At every juncture, Levy found himself unable to outrun the association he had with David Rose, the character who made him famous. So, in a dual effort to flex a different set of muscles and give himself the roles he wasn’t getting, he returned to showrunning this year with Big Mistakes, a crime caper that follows the hilarious misadventures of two siblings who get unceremoniously dragged into an underground world of organized crime. Once again, Levy has created an impressively joke-heavy comedy. But with the threat of imminent death lurking around every corner, it could never be mistaken for “cozy.” He would’ve been forgiven for capitalizing on Schitt’s mania with a follow-up project that felt spiritually similar. But Levy, who compares his post-Emmys trajectory to a musician making a sharp pivot on their second album after building a dedicated fanbase with their debut, wanted a real challenge. Even if just to prove to himself that he could meet it.

Levy is catching me up on his life from behind a desk in a comically barren office. It’s here, inside this nondescript building in New Jersey, where Levy and his writers have spent the past few months breaking the second season of Big Mistakes. The showrunner is currently on a lunch break, though he doesn’t eat anything during the hour we spend chatting.

“My life hasn’t changed that much from before,” he says of the last half-decade, during which he’s joined the Hollywood elite, swanning down red carpets and sitting front-row at Paris Fashion Week’s hottest-ticket runway shows. “I mean, it has in the sense that people know who I am now. But I don’t have to answer to the kind of shit that, like, the Heated Rivalry boys have to answer to. That is a level of attention that scares the shit out of me.”

It’s funny to hear Levy talk like this. After all, his father, Second City Television veteran and American Pie standout Eugene Levy, is an “incredibly beloved member of the entertainment industry.” One would assume the actor would be used to the spotlight. But over the years, Levy has gone on record discussing his conflicting feelings about growing up the son of a famous person. It was Schitt’s Creek, in fact, that really brought the two of them together. As the lore goes, Levy showed an early draft to Eugene, and Eugene agreed to come aboard. The series snapped into place when Eugene convinced his old pal, the late, great, Catherine O’Hara to join the project.

“I know what people think,” he says when the conversation turns to his father. “The whole ‘nepo baby’ thing, I get it.” Levy feels that, after more than a decade working in Hollywood (and eight years working in Canadian TV), he’s earned the right to “celebrate [his] success,” independent of Eugene. “But I will never pretend like the opportunity fell in my lap. I’m never going to downplay the unbelievable leap of faith [my dad] gave me in agreeing to do the show together.”

He points to the 2024 Emmys, which he and his father co-hosted, as a defining moment. “It was the most terrifying experience I’ve had in this industry, and yet the most rewarding,” he remembers. “But it was a real moment where I could stand on my own two feet beside him and not behind him.”

Then again, he had already proven himself. The year before, Levy released his debut feature film, Good Grief, in which he played an artist mourning the death of his husband before being picked back up by his two best friends. By this time, Levy had already found himself pushing back against easy categorization; making a rather somber film was a deliberate rejection of that.

Big Mistakes was also a kiss-off of sorts. In those years of being sent scripts to audition for, he’d realized that “there’s not an abundance of parts for gay actors in crime movies.” So, he decided to make his own. “It really came from wanting to act in a genre I wouldn’t normally have access to.”

Levy knew he wanted to center the story on a pair of siblings, and while he felt confident in his vision for Nicky Dardano (the straitlaced pastor brother, who is lying to his congregation about being a “non-practicing” gay man), he wanted someone else to help shape the vision for the sister, Morgan, who was messy and impulsive in all the ways he wasn’t. He found his North Star in Rachel Sennott, who he met while filming HBO’s controversial miniseries The Idol. “I turned to her to write it with me,” he says. “That just seemed like a really fucked-up take on action.”

Together, they crafted what Levy describes as “this very strange, very funny family thriller” about two people who couldn’t be less suited for a life of crime accidentally finding themselves sucked into it. The story rounded itself out by juxtaposing Nicky and Morgan’s (Taylor Ortega) life-or-death exploits with the comparatively innocuous familial drama of the Dardano matriarch Linda (Laurie Metcalf), who is mounting a mayoral campaign; Nicky and Morgan’s goody-two-shoes sister Natalie (Abby Quinn), who has alienated herself from her siblings by constantly sucking up to their mom; and Morgan’s hopelessly-in-love boyfriend Max (Jack Innanen), who wants to marry her despite her increasing emotional distance.

The dysfunctional disposition of the Dardano clan will be immediately recognizable to anyone who was a fan of Schitt’s, but parallels to that decade-old hit end there. The world presented in Levy’s latest is noticeably bleaker than its predecessor. Schitt’s, with its trademark idealism and sanguine pep, feels like a lost remnant of the Obama era; Levy even made a conscious decision to avoid any depictions of homophobia in it since “the more you discuss it, the more you validate that it should have a place in the conversation, and I strongly believe that it should not.”

Big Mistakes is, well, something else.

“I can’t see how it wouldn’t,” he responds when asked if this tonal shift reflects his changing attitudes about the political climate. “If I were to psychoanalyze the two shows, it makes sense that one was soft and sweet and hopeful, and the other one is aggressive and violent and angry…When you wake up angry for years, it’s hard not to want to channel that anger into something creative.” And yet, ultimately, Levy is an optimist at heart. “But I still wanted it to be rooted in a belief of love, in a belief that things will get better. That they have to get better.”

It’s why, despite its more direct confrontation of homophobia, Big Mistakes still grants Nicky a solid support system. “It was important that his family never question it, that he was never scared to talk about who he was,” he stresses. “I believe it’s important to show families supporting their queer kids. That’s still a powerful message to put out into the world. Unless there’s a specific reason, I don’t think I’ll ever tell a story where parents don’t support their kids.”

It’s comments like these that provide a hint of how Levy shows up as a leader in his work. Far from the outdated portrait of the tyrannical showrunner who fashions himself a god, Levy seeks to level the playing field so that everyone feels valued. His attitude stems from his own past, when he was working as a VJ for MTV Canada in the aughts. “I would walk into work and think, I don’t know if I’m a priority here,” he recalls. “So the minute I found myself in a position of power, I did everything I could to right that wrong, because I know how deflating it can be to not feel valued. This is not just one name sitting at the top. This is a collective of people, and if you were to tug at the thread of any of those departments, the whole thing would fall down. So I want to make it known to everybody that I hire that they’re a necessary part of this community.”

And that same spirit carries over to his other endeavors. Lately, he’s been finding real purpose in helping others develop their projects through his Not A Real Production Company. “It’s the greatest blessing to find young writers, put them in front of executives, and say, ‘Buy their show. Give them the same opportunity I was given,’” he gushes. “When you’ve been given a lot, you’ve got to pay it forward. Otherwise, it’s a really lonely place to find yourself. Success is nothing if not shared.”

For now, however, Levy has his hands full with Big Mistakes season two.It’s a much busier schedule than he had with Schitt’s, when he could create “in this bubble” since the Pop TV show came with relatively low stakes. He holds that era close to his heart, citing it as “the perfect example of what can happen when stories are given the space and time to breathe, when storytellers are really invested in for their ideas and not the potential of their ideas.”

He knows that there is pressure for Big Mistakes, but he’s learned to stop worrying. “I try to block out as much of the noise as humanly possible,” he says. “At the end of the day, if I can go to bed feeling like I did exactly what I wanted to do, it allows for success to not affect me. If I feel good about what I’m making and, god forbid, it doesn’t work, at least I’m not living in regret.”

This carefree attitude, he tells me, has slowly developed with age. We are just a couple of weeks shy of his 43rd birthday, and while he initially jokes that the most important thing he’s learned in his 40s is “the importance of an excellent facialist,” he goes on to stress how freeing it’s felt to simply not care. “You stop giving a shit,” he deadpans. “I don’t give a shit about anything.”

Well, almost. After taking a beat, he clarifies himself. “I want people to be happy. I want my friends to be happy. I just want what’s best for everybody.” Whether he’s creating projects for himself, acting in other people’s, or simply extending a helping hand to the next generation of Hollywood creatives, Levy wants to bring joy to audiences. But not at the expense of his own.

“I want to be happy,” he says finally. “And I want to feel inspired.”

Photographed by Cody Lidtke

Styled by Michael Fisher

Written by Michael Cuby

Grooming: Jenny Sauce

Nails: Danny Tavarez 

Production Assistant: Adelaide Young

Photo Assistant: Stefaun Maldonado

DP: Kenneth Martell 

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