Why Dan Levy Felt The Draw Back To Sibling Dynamics With ‘Big Mistakes’

When Schitt’s Creekended in 2020, many wondered what its creator, actor and writer Dan Levy would do next. “When you do something for so long and it touches people in such meaningful ways, you’re left thinking, ‘Who am I? What do I want?’” says Levy, who has since made his directorial film debut with Good Grief, hosted The Big Brunch and co-starred on The Idol. He met Rachel Sennott on the latter, and together they forged his return to series television with Big Mistakes. “The idea of pumping out ‘content’ means very little to me,” he says. “I would much rather create things that excite me.”

DEADLINE: What were you able to do creatively in the past five years that led you to Big Mistakes?

DAN LEVY: I was able to explore outside of the thing that people know me for. In my case, I have often been referred to as a comedian, and I always feel like I didn’t earn that title. I’ve never done standup. I’ve never been staffed in a room. I don’t really consider myself a comedian. I think I’m an actor that happened to have success in a comedy series. I love comedy, and I think it comes most naturally to me. But after leaving Schitt’s Creek, I was really interested in exploring writing, acting in, and directing drama. As a result, Good Grief came about.

It was so formative for me to be able to experiment in a genre that was relatively new to me. That curiosity and exploration allowed me to then say, ‘OK, I’m ready to come back to comedy and I’m ready to come back to TV.’ Also, I’ve allowed for the dust to settle a little bit on the audience’s expectations of me. I think it’s hard to go from a character that people love so much into something else and expect the audience to just completely adjust their expectations. So, the timing of it all felt right.

DEADLINE: You and Rachel Sennott got to know each other on The Idol? Is that where Big Mistakes starts?

LEVY: Yeah. I had been a big fan of Rachel’s from Shiva Baby and I just love her comedic sensibility. I thought our voices together would be such a strange clashing of perspectives and generational outlook. In terms of how we carry ourselves in life, I’m an incredibly protected person. I don’t like to go out that much. And Rachel has a freedom of expression that I don’t have naturally. I also think there’s a generational divide. You can’t escape the fact that [with her] being a millennial, there are two very different reactions to everything. So, it felt valuable to me for her to substantiate the Morgan perspective and give that character a little bit of her joie de vivre.

It’s almost like Rachel [Sennott] came in and set the table, and then Taylor [Ortega] came in and took what we had done collectively and made it entirely her own thing. The character is even better for it, having gone through two very funny, very smart women’s brains.

DEADLINE: Was there ever a consideration that Rachel would play the character of Morgan?

LEVY: When we wrote it, nobody knew what was going to happen. And then when I Love LA happened, it gave us the opportunity to find Taylor [Ortega], which was such a gift. It’s almost like Rachel came in and set the table, and then Taylor came in and took what we had done collectively and made it entirely her own thing. The character is even better for it, having gone through two very funny, very smart women’s brains.

DEADLINE: I don’t generally like watching people argue on screen, but I could watch these two characters bickering for hours.

LEVY: I do think that it comes from a place of love, that their bickering is ultimately — deep, deep down — an expression of feeling hurt. From Morgan’s perspective, she feels betrayed by the fact that Nicky left her in the house as a kid to go to seminary school. And I love the idea of truth coming out by way of the criminal elements forcing them to have these very real conversations about how they got to where they are with each other. I don’t know whether they would have had that kind of closeness had they not gone through what they went through in this season of the show.

DEADLINE: It seems, thematically, that you’re very interested in sibling relationships. What is it that’s so rich about that subject?

LEVY: It’s family dynamics, honestly. I think there’s something so funny about the way that we interact with our family behind closed doors. There’s a looseness, a kind of crassness, a gruffness — you don’t let them off the hook in the same way you would anyone out in the real world. Exploring how these family dynamics operate when no one is looking is hysterically funny to me — the way that we can get away with being the worst versions of ourselves with our families. I think back to fighting with my sister when we were very young. If I ever pulled that kind of behavior with a friend or a stranger, forget about it. And yet in the confines of my house, the two of us could scream at each other in ways that we would never scream at anyone else. That’s the juice that I love getting my hands dirty in.

I think the industry has an ability to pigeonhole people and we have to shed that a little bit. Tom Hanks started out in comedy. There are so many funny people who make really great dramatic actors, and I want to see more comedians in dramatic roles.

DEADLINE: Is it just, ‘You have to love me. Where are you going to go?’

LEVY: Of course. I love my family, but human beings living together under the same roof, it’s crazy if you think about it. No wonder we’re all going nuts. It is such a crazy amount of time to spend in such close quarters. I believe that human beings need isolation to restore and recharge our batteries. We need solitude. We need peace. And if you’re in a big family, with even two or three siblings, you will not find peace until you become an adult.

DEADLINE: In terms of Nicky and Morgan’s relationship, what was the arc you wanted to explore?

LEVY: The first season of any show is laying the foundation for what’s to come. So, for me, it was about telling the story of two siblings who hold a lot of resentment for each other and have never really worked through it. They are, in a way, reactions to one another. As buttoned-up and as rule-abiding as Nicky is, Morgan is reckless. And to explore and explain how these characters became who they were, by way of crime, felt like a really fun way to force these two to start squeezing the truth out. What I wanted them to learn by the end is that there was a missed opportunity that has the potential to repair itself and that they could, in each other’s company, become better versions of themselves and better siblings. I think that’s very relatable for a lot of families out there.

DEADLINE: Why was the underworld the right vehicle for this show?

LEVY: I feel like, personally, I would do so badly in the face of organized crime. If I found myself in that situation, I would be at the bottom of a lake so fast. For me as a writer, it was so fun to look inward and find my own reaction to this. The crime felt entertaining. It felt like a really great way to leave an audience wanting more episode by episode. It was a challenge that I had never experienced before and one that, as a writer, turned out to be really rewarding in the end.

DEADLINE: How did you decide that Nicky is gay, but not practicing?

LEVY: When I write a character, especially in the first season, I always see the character as a pendulum and you have to pull that pendulum back as far as you can in order to release it and have enough momentum for that pendulum to swing over the course of several seasons of a show. So, when you think, Nicky’s going to be a rule book, Nicky’s going to be someone who really values goodness. Well, what is a job that could lend itself to goodness and being a rule abider? What if he’s a man of faith? Great. What if he’s a religious leader? OK, how do we pull the pendulum back even further? What if he’s doing something wrong in the church, but we don’t want it to be something that compromises his morality. What if he’s found love in an institution that has allowed him to be who he is, but doesn’t allow the practicing part — which, as hard as that is for a gay person to stomach, is also funny. Even the term non-practicing, I’m like, ‘Well, practicing is kind of what makes the sexuality.’ So it was in an attempt to pull that pendulum back that we landed on all that Nicky was, as this pastor who walked into a closet, so to speak.

DEADLINE: What was it like to get back into a writers’ room and start to think about arcs and long-term plans?

LEVY: I love a writers’ room. I think a lot of it is finding the right alchemy of the room. Once we had the right pieces in place, the show came alive in ways that I could never have expected. Writing crime with no real experience was a tough thing, until we brought in very experienced drama writers who were able to open the doors of the serialization of what the crime could be, in a way that felt fresh and new. I, then, could impart my comedy lens into the crime world and it just got into a groove almost instantly.

DEADLINE: I really thought you were going to say something different. ‘And then we brought in criminals…’

LEVY: No, but we did have a crime expert. We call him Mob Dan, and Dan is an expert on organized crime. It was important that every move we made from a criminal standpoint was real and plausible. I didn’t want any of it to be fake. So, the entire season of the show, criminally speaking, is as it would happen. We would bring in Dan anytime we had an idea that felt like, ‘This is outrageous, what would Dan think?’ Most of the time, the most outrageous ideas had already been done by a criminal, including the bull’s testicles. The education I have received in the world of organized crime is extraordinary. I could listen to this man speak for hours. He’s just so articulate and funny and had really good ideas.

DEADLINE: Is there a scene or sequence you’re most proud of in Season 1 ?

LEVY: One of the last scenes, where Taylor and I are being held against our will, was a really fun scene to shoot because never in a million years did I think that I, as an actor, would ever get to play that kind of role. Nobody’s coming to me for an action movie. I would kill to do one, but if the jobs aren’t coming outside, we got to make it from the inside. Getting to shoot the action sequences, getting to play those moments of high intensity, the thrills, the suspense, that was such a joy. And getting to do it with Taylor, who is such a good actor… I just loved it so much.

DEADLINE: What are other things you want to write for yourself? Is there an Austen period drama in you?

LEVY: I would love to do a period drama. I would love to do a full-blown drama. I love collaborating and I love collaborating with directors. There are so many directors I would love to work with. Yeah. I think the industry has an ability to pigeonhole people and we have to shed that a little bit. Tom Hanks started out in comedy. There are so many funny people who make really great dramatic actors, and I want to see more comedians in dramatic roles.

DEADLINE: So, you’re saying there’s a Philadelphia in your future?

LEVY: [Laughs.] You know what? If the script is great, I’m game. I am as versatile now — having done this show — as I’ve ever been. So yeah, keep them coming.