Seth Rogen offered a heartfelt tribute to Catherine O’Hara at the Actor Awards on Sunday as he accepted a posthumous honour on her behalf.
O’Hara was named best female actor in a comedy series for her work on Apple TV’s “The Studio.” Her win came less than a month after she died at age 71.
Rogen, a Vancouver native and creator of “The Studio,” said he was asked to “assume the very sad honour” of speaking in her place.
“I know she would have been honoured to receive this award from her fellow performers, who I know she respected so much. She was such big fans of all of yours,” Rogen said after the audience rose for a standing ovation.
“Something that I’ve just been marvelling at over the last few weeks was her ability to be generous and kind and gracious, while never, ever minimizing her own talents and her own ability to contribute to the work that we were doing. She knew she could destroy, and she wanted to destroy every day on set.”
O’Hara died on Jan. 30 of a pulmonary embolism with rectal cancer listed as the underlying cause, leaving behind a career of unforgettable roles that included Moira Rose on “Schitt’s Creek” and Kate McCallister in “Home Alone.”
On “The Studio,” she played Patty Leigh, a mostly retired movie executive with a sharp sense of humour. She was nominated at the SAG-AFTRA ceremony, which streamed live on Netflix, in the same category as her co-star Kathryn Hahn, who was seen wiping away tears from the audience as Rogen offered his tribute.
Rogen recalled that O’Hara would often email him and co-creator Evan Goldberg the night before shooting with various suggestions for ways to improve the script.
“It said, ‘Hello, I hope you’ll consider the following.’ And then there would be a completely rewritten version of the scene she was in,” Rogen added.
“Literally, 100 per cent of the time, it made not just her character better, but it made the scene better and the entire show better as a whole. And she really showed that you can be a genius and be kind, and one of those things does not have to come at the expense of the other in any way, shape or form.”
He closed by encouraging people to explore her film and TV work.
“If you have people in your lives that don’t know her work, if they’re kids in your lives, or just people who are out of touch or stupid or something, just show them O’Hara dancing to Harry Belafonte (in) ‘Beetlejuice,’ show them O’Hara hurting her knee in ‘Best in Show’ and doing that amazing thing where she hobbles around,” he said.
“Tell the people, as they are laughing, that that’s Catherine O’Hara, and we were lucky that we got to live in a world where she so generously shared her talents with us.”
O’Hara is the first woman in the history of the Screen Actors Guild to earn an individual trophy posthumously. She also won as an ensemble member in “The Studio.”
She previously won in the category for the final season of “Schitt’s Creek.”
– With files from The Associated Press
