Dan Levy has a confession to make: he has a deep-seated fear of being blackmailed into getting involved in organized crime.
He knows it’s an “irrational” fear. And don’t bother asking him where it comes from. “I guess if I were to do a deep dive, it would be a fear of losing freedom,” the Canadian multi-hyphenate said. “We could go into a whole therapy session with that. But I’ve just always thought I wouldn’t survive it. I would be seen as a huge liability early on.”
But now, he’s channelling that fear into his latest project, the new TV crime comedy “Big Mistakes,” for which he serves as showrunner, executive producer and star. Premiering April 9 on Netflix, the series marks Levy’s most significant television project since his breakthrough on CBC’s “Schitt’s Creek” a decade ago. It’s also one of his most ambitious.
“For me, the genres of suspense, thriller and crime have felt like such lush territory,” said Levy. “So I began exploring this idea of, what would a person who is so incapable of crime do in a situation that required them to participate — or die?”
In “Big Mistakes,” Levy plays Nicky, a queer priest who unwittingly finds himself swept up in organized crime alongside his sister Morgan, a school teacher. Their sticky predicament couldn’t arrive at a worse moment for the inept pair: it comes as they’re still mourning the death of their grandmother, and as their mother is planning to mount a mayoral campaign.
In this brother-sister buddy comedy, which Levy cocreated with the American actor and screenwriter Rachel Sennott (“I Love LA”), there are echoes of “Schitt’s Creek.” Both are underdog stories. Both also centre on a pair of deeply incapable siblings.
At the same time, the two series are vastly different in tone. “‘Schitt’s Creek’ is the warm hug,” Levy said, “while this show is like, ‘Strap yourself in, we’re going for a ride.’”
His Nicky also could not be more different from David Rose of “Schitt’s Creek,” a role for which Levy won an Emmy in 2020. Whereas David, at least initially, is an entitled brat, Nicky is completely selfless, sometimes even to his own detriment.
For Levy, that the characters are so dissimilar wasn’t necessarily intentional. “I never wanted what I’m doing on this show to be seen as a rejection of David,” he said. “I just wanted to focus on telling a different character’s story, and it turned out that Nicky ended up being very antithetical to David simply by way of my own curiosity. I think when you’ve done something for so long, you’re naturally inclined to explore different emotional territory.”
For “Big Mistakes,” Levy has surrounded himself with a cast of both veterans and fresh faces. Newcomer Taylor Ortega co-stars as Nicky’s sister Morgan, while Laurie Metcalf, best known for her Emmy-winning work as Jackie Harris on “Roseanne,” plays their mother, Linda.
“I’ve been a fan of Laurie for the majority of my life,” said Levy. “We were doing press in New York a couple of days ago and I was looking across the table at her thinking, how did this happen?”
That Levy managed to find a big star to play his screen mother is nothing new, of course. For six years on “Schitt’s Creek” — which he created with his father, Eugene Levy — he was scene partners with the great Canadian comedian Catherine O’Hara, who died unexpectedly earlier this year.
“She had this very singular ability to burrow a performance deep into your heart, and I do think that’s why her loss is so felt, because she’s irreplaceable, both as a person and an actor,” he said. “She just made people feel loved.”
Levy, 42, spoke with the Star at the Shangri-La hotel in downtown Toronto. In person, he’s warm and ebullient, offering answers that are always thoughtful and even, at times, deeply introspective.
This recent press-tour stop in the city marked a homecoming of sorts for the actor. Though he spends much of his time in the U.S., Levy was born and raised in Toronto, attending high school at North Toronto Collegiate Institute, before studying film production at York University and Ryerson University (now known as TMU).
Since he concluded “Schitt’s Creek” in 2020, his life has been filled with artistic endeavours. He made his feature film directorial debut with 2023’s “Good Grief,” a dramedy he also wrote and starred in, about a man processing the death of his husband. Levy also produced the 2025 documentary “Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery,” about Sarah McLachlan’s all-women music festival.
“Making the Lilith Fair documentary was one of the most special experiences for me, both professionally and personally,” said Levy. “It felt like this wonderful way of somehow repaying the debt of what Sarah and those women did, not just for me, but for the entire music industry.”
Now, with “Big Mistakes,” Levy is ready to settle into a project that, if successful, he hopes can have a long run over several years.
“I’ve been in situations where you start to brainstorm an idea and it just fizzles out, and you have to admit that it just doesn’t have legs,” he said. “But much like ‘Schitt’s Creek,’ when we were in the early days of developing this, we had that same kind of momentum, and that’s when I knew this show has lasting power.”
