Paula Mejía: “In the mid-1990s, when Catherine O’Hara flew into Lockhart, Texas, to begin shooting the indie mockumentary *Waiting for Guffman*, she felt spooked. The film’s director and lead actor, Christopher Guest, had shown her scenes of their co-stars already seeming comfortable in their heavily improvised roles. As a gifted sketch comedian and a co-founder of the Toronto-based comedy show *Second City Television*, or *SCTV*, O’Hara knew her way around a ‘yes, and’ prompt. But seeing how her fellow actors alchemized Guest’s loose script, about community-theater members preparing a musical for their tiny Missouri hometown’s sesquicentennial, into fully realized characters intimidated her.
“Then Guest gave O’Hara some unexpected advice: ‘Don’t worry about being funny,’ she recalled later in an interview with *The New Yorker*. ‘Just be in the scene.’ When the film came out, O’Hara’s portrayal of Sheila Albertson, a goofy travel agent who’s sharper than she lets on, stood out even amid a sparkling cast of actors playing memorable weirdos. Her wacky asides, undergirded by a subtle poignancy, both gave *Guffman* a zany edge and helped transform the mockumentary genre itself.
“A comedy giant, O’Hara, who died last week at 71, was known for lending an eccentricity to her characters: a worried mom in the box-office juggernaut *Home Alone*; the dippy Moira Rose in the sitcom *Schitt’s Creek*; a salty therapist in the dystopian *The Last of Us*; a shrewd former movie executive in the Hollywood send-up *The Studio*. But the four mockumentaries that O’Hara made with Guest over the course of a decade—*Guffman*, *Best in Show*, *A Mighty Wind*, and *For Your Consideration*—are the most transcendent examples of her comedic prowess.”
Something I love about O’Hara is she’s always had this warmth and depth to her even in her most absurd and silly characters on screen. It’s really hard to think of anyone with a similar presence.
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Paula Mejía: “In the mid-1990s, when Catherine O’Hara flew into Lockhart, Texas, to begin shooting the indie mockumentary *Waiting for Guffman*, she felt spooked. The film’s director and lead actor, Christopher Guest, had shown her scenes of their co-stars already seeming comfortable in their heavily improvised roles. As a gifted sketch comedian and a co-founder of the Toronto-based comedy show *Second City Television*, or *SCTV*, O’Hara knew her way around a ‘yes, and’ prompt. But seeing how her fellow actors alchemized Guest’s loose script, about community-theater members preparing a musical for their tiny Missouri hometown’s sesquicentennial, into fully realized characters intimidated her.
“Then Guest gave O’Hara some unexpected advice: ‘Don’t worry about being funny,’ she recalled later in an interview with *The New Yorker*. ‘Just be in the scene.’ When the film came out, O’Hara’s portrayal of Sheila Albertson, a goofy travel agent who’s sharper than she lets on, stood out even amid a sparkling cast of actors playing memorable weirdos. Her wacky asides, undergirded by a subtle poignancy, both gave *Guffman* a zany edge and helped transform the mockumentary genre itself.
“A comedy giant, O’Hara, who died last week at 71, was known for lending an eccentricity to her characters: a worried mom in the box-office juggernaut *Home Alone*; the dippy Moira Rose in the sitcom *Schitt’s Creek*; a salty therapist in the dystopian *The Last of Us*; a shrewd former movie executive in the Hollywood send-up *The Studio*. But the four mockumentaries that O’Hara made with Guest over the course of a decade—*Guffman*, *Best in Show*, *A Mighty Wind*, and *For Your Consideration*—are the most transcendent examples of her comedic prowess.”
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Something I love about O’Hara is she’s always had this warmth and depth to her even in her most absurd and silly characters on screen. It’s really hard to think of anyone with a similar presence.