Actress Catherine O’Hara (Best in Show, A Mighty Wind), most notably known for her role in Schitt’s Creek as Moira Rose, has opened up about why she left Saturday Night Live during her first week as a cast member in the early 1980s. According to Deadline, O’Hara sat down with People to set the record straight about what happened. She would have been a cast member during the series’ sixth season.
“There’s been BS stories about I was supposedly scared by somebody,” O’Hara said via People.
Some have speculated that the late Michael O’Donoghue (Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video, Manhattan), a former head writer for SNL, had a hand in what happened.
O’Hara has come out and confirmed the rumor is just that. Instead, her loyalty to Second City Television or SCTV, a Canadian sketch comedy series that helped launch her acting career, led to her leaving.
“Our producer would get a deal with a network, and we’d have a show for a season or two, and then that deal would go away. There’d be a break, then we’d do the show again,” O’Hara said as per Deadline.
Amid one of her breaks from the show, Deadline notes that O’Hara said: “I got asked to be on Saturday Night Live. And of course I said yes. Who doesn’t want to do that?”
After SCTV returned, O’Hara left SNL and did not get the chance to film one single episode: “I said, ‘Oh, sorry, I have to be with my [comedy] family,'” O’Hara stated, according to Deadline.
O’Hara stated that she was wrong in leaving.
“Yeah, not cool to take a job and leave it. You know what I mean? But it all worked out the way it was supposed to,” O’Hara said as per Deadline.
SCTV, later known as SCTV Network and SCTV Channel, ran infrequently on air for six seasons between 1976 and 1984.