Schitt’s Creek rewrote queer stories on television. From David’s now iconic “the wine, not the label” line, to Patrick’s heartwarming coming out, through to the couple’s “happy ending” wedding. In a new book, You Are My Happy Ending: Schitt’s Creek and The Legacy Of Queer Television, The Queer Review contributor Emily Garside recalls classic moments from the series, along with the fashion—and Moira’s wigs—while examining the show’s impact on screen and beyond, including a plethora of fan fiction.
In this extract, Garside looks at the political implications of being visibly queer while promoting a queer television show, and how this moves the conversation and representation forward.
The Politics of a Happy Ending
In centering, as part of its final season in particular, a gay relationship as the show’s central or endgame relationship was, in TV terms, still a bold move in 2018/2019. It was bolder, somehow more “activist” in that it chose not to make a “statement” out of it. Schitt’s Creek was a vital moment in TV history, being a romantic-comedy-drama that ended with a gay wedding. It’s a great moment in Canadian TV history and broader TV history. It has been a long road for LGBTQ+ representation on TV, one far from over or won, and one that owes a debt across TV and queer culture. This cracking open into the mainstream came with a sense of responsibility and an opportunity to do more beyond the show. The cast, led by the example of Dan Levy, embraced activism in various ways. There was activism innate in promoting and talking about the show, but many involved also used the platform and message of Schitt’s Creek to take that beyond the show. For Levy, in particular, being a force for good is something he has embraced and taken beyond the show itself in an almost meta “lead by example” way.
Promoting a Happy Ending
Outside the town of Schitt’s Creek itself, the act of talking freely on mainstream TV platforms about a queer TV show and talking about a gay relationship still feels radical. Networks know they’ll get complaints; if you look at interviews closely, some avoid engaging with queerness in their questions. This is perhaps subtle, yet it’s still there and insidious; the fact that many still avert their eyes from queerness shows there is still a way to go.
In promoting the work, Levy has become an activist: on every talk show, and every time he was able to mention being gay (which, in watching over the years, you can see him clearly make a conscious effort to do), he is an activist in talking about the inclusive themes of Schitt’s Creek. It seems like nothing to straight audiences (of the non-bigoted kind). He’s promoting a show. But to have a show with promotional images of two men kissing looks like a piece of activist art from the 1980s or 1990s.
Let’s not pretend that being queer isn’t still a risk to a career and beyond in terms of discrimination and thwarted options. As an artist, no doubt Levy has struggled to get queer stories heard by the powers that be. As an actor, in being “out,” he risks having limited roles passed his way. This feels like something from the 1970s or earlier but remains an ingrained part of the Hollywood machine today. As a queer person in the public eye, he no doubt deals with all manner of homophobic abuse at various points, both online and in person. One could hope he escapes the worst forms of it, but such abuse remains insidiously present.
So yes, even from someone beginning at a point of relative privilege, Levy making queer art is a form of activism. That his chosen form is writing and TV also doesn’t make it less revolutionary. Most people in their thirties and older remember the first “gay [insert activity here]” on TV. This was also the days before streaming services and prolific broadband, and all of these were viewed on TV late at night or smuggled in on VHS and DVDs away from roommates or parents, because on mainstream TV, there were very few queer people. And, as we have seen, even in “gay series,” things as seemingly simple as a happy ending for the characters are lacking. So Levy’s happy ending to Schitt’s Creek is truly poignant for that reason.
The show has illustrated that championing LGBTQ+ causes isn’t only the responsibility of LGBTQ+ creatives. How the cast talks about equality when promoting the show indicates what they’ve learned about allyship. Annie Murphy talks about sibling allyship in the context of the sibling relationship: “David’s sexuality is so far from her mind at all times” (The Advocate, 2021) and she “wants him to be happy”. Catherine O’Hara talks about how she “loved how they handled Patrick’s character” and his coming out along with the show being a “world I want to live in” for its equality (Gay Times, 2021). And Noah Reid talking about playing Patrick and that “I never felt the need to play Patrick a certain way based on his sexuality—I sort of approached him as if he were me and he was attracted to somebody” (Irish Independent, 2021). These are all small but cumulatively important acts of allyship. Noah Reid will likely be asked about Patrick for the rest of his career, and that he talks of the character fondly, intelligently, and with compassion and support for the LGBTQ+ community is a vital piece of allyship.
There is an innate sense of activism around the show. In the most basic sense, this is apparent every time any cast or crew member, particularly Dan and Eugene Levy, spoke about the series and foregrounded its acceptance of gay relationships. The emphasis Eugene puts on his acceptance of Dan’s sexuality in interviews and Dan on his father’s acceptance of him was an act of activism, particularly against an increasingly right-wing backdrop in the United States (the show began during Obama’s presidency and ended during the fourth year of Trump’s presidency, while Canada’s politics remained more left-wing).
In 2020, going on a talk show to promote a TV show shouldn’t be an act of activism, but it still is. To go on mainstream (particularly some North American) TV platforms with a “gay” TV show talking about a gay relationship is still a radical idea. Again, it is perhaps a subtle thing that queer viewers pick up on: avoiding the direct question and avoiding naming the thing. But it’s there, and it’s insidious in some sectors. The series developed a strong relationship with various supportive press platforms. Entertainment Weekly was one of them.
Given that Entertainment Weekly has a huge platform with an incredible reach, and a certain amount of cultural clout, the show regularly being promoted by the outelt was important. For the show’s final season, EW ran several interviews and articles, most focusing on David and Patrick’s story. This feels incredibly supportive, progressive, and “activist” in itself. Noah Reid and Dan Levy recreated scenes from classic romantic movies as the cover shoot for a series of “digital covers” to accompany the end of the show. They did versions of Sixteen Candles, Notting Hill, and Casablanca. What they did on the cover of Entertainment Weekly was queer the romcom and romantic classic movies.
This photoshoot is important for several reasons. First, Entertainment Weekly putting the show on the cover was a sign of its success. For decades, the publication has been the leading entertainment magazine in North America and is considered a marker of quality in the shows it endorses. As a publication, Entertainment Weekly historically supports LGBTQ+ performers and culture. Its Pride covers are ahead of the curve in terms of the American press, and they have long offered interviews and platforms to LGBTQ+ performers and celebrities. But this cover series and accompanying interview felt like they cemented Schitt’s Creek’s place in cultural history and did it in a fully queer style. They’re also an incredibly beautiful set of cover images—the Casablanca shoot in particular gives a true air of old-school Hollywood to Levy and Reid. But the beautiful romantic and fully gay photoshoot for a huge mainstream magazine feels very much like the stuff of younger Levy’s dreams, particularly in that it allowed him to queer the romcoms that he loves and feel like final punctuation to the activism inherent in talking about the show in the press.
In those EW interviews, the pair talked about the impact of the show’s ending and the power of showing David and Patrick’s story: “I think the way that we’ve handled sexuality on the show has been incredibly nonchalant, and that’s been very deliberate so not to make the queer storylines stand out in any way because we don’t want them to,” Levy told EW, “We want them to be presented with the same kind of casual ease that we present straight storylines”. Reid adds, “There aren’t a lot of examples of same-sex relationships on television that are treated just like any relationship would be treated. I know that’s something that Dan and our whole writing team have been really [cognizant of]. These guys are just like anybody would be in a couple, and that’s how it absolutely should be represented on television. It feels like it’s really hitting home with a lot of people who don’t feel like they’ve seen that represented on screens a lot”. (Entertainment Weekly, April 9th, 2020).
On the same day that Levy and Reid did the Entertainment Weekly shoot, they also visited a special billboard in downtown Los Angeles. And this was perhaps Levy’s most personal piece of activist action in promoting his show. The final season’s promotional images and videos saw the Rose family, Stevie, and Patrick dressed in formalwear in front of the Rosebud Motel. Among the fairly standard set of pictures of the Roses in their glamorous attire outside the motel was an image of David and Patrick kissing. Combined with the previous, this was filled with activist elements just by existing. But Levy (and the network) had bigger plans. The Patrick and David image was used for a series of large billboards. This included one on Sunset Boulevard. Levy wrote on Instagram: “Fuck yes, we did. Shine bright, friends. Very grateful for Pop TV and CBC and their support on this campaign that my teenage self would never have dreamed of being true”. (December 17th, 2019). That in itself shows the activist angle to this: Levy giving his younger self what he needed to see: visible queer stories and queer love stories. Also important was Noah Reid’s vocal support of the billboards, stating on Instagram that he was “proud to be part of this moment”. (December 19th, 2019).
The only usual gay posters seen around Los Angeles or any other big city are sexual health ones, which perhaps link back to where the show sits in creating new narratives around queer relationships. Most importantly, though, unapologetically putting the show’s queer characters as prominently as possible was an important statement. Levy was quick to praise the networks for getting behind them, which was also important. The show’s official Twitter sent out some of the billboards’ exact addresses, encouraging fans to take a selfie with it and tag them. And hundreds of fans did, often taking selfies of them kissing their partner too. And while, yes, it was a brilliant marketing campaign, what a wonderful opportunity it provided for today’s teenagers. And it was also an opportunity for people like Levy, who didn’t have that kind of representation as a teenager, to be able to take that selfie now. That is as activist as the billboard annoying homophobes as they drive by.
Throw into this mix that Levy was promoting this show with his dad; Eugene Levy sat next to Dan on talk shows, accepted awards alongside him, and talked about the gay love story at the end of their show. Eugene Levy was a role model for all the dads of queer people, showing them this could be done. That familial vocal support on a public stage was possible and admirable. These have fed the wider conversations the show has helped produce. So in seeing someone like them—whether you are Eugene as the father or Dan as the son—and their easy acceptance can change things. Among the questions they were regularly asked was about Dan’s own coming out. And while there is an argument for not forcing queer creatives to use their history and trauma when talking about their work, there is also an importance in giving queer creatives a platform to do so. In this case, the power of a supportive parent, a man in his seventies, being able to show what supportive parenting of a queer child looked like was a political move.
Eugene, who hasn’t been overly political his whole career, quietly takes a standby position in being part of that conversation. Eugene and Dan Levy have always talked about their relationship. Still, in virtually every interview together, Dan talks about his father’s acceptance of him as a gay man—a subtle and important element of the politics and activism of the show. The show’s message of “lead by example” extends to its creators. While it’s no secret, and Levy is very much “out,” there is a kind of activist, political side to people like Levy who choose to be actively out. Some actors who have come out—of which there are still too few who are comfortable enough to do so—rarely comment on that part of their lives unless pressured to do so. And that is their prerogative, just like any other area of their lives. But some take their being out and in the public eye as an opportunity to raise visibility and that is vitally important.
If visibility is key to the show’s activism, then the icing on that cake came with the show’s Emmy wins in 2020 and another gesture like the billboard. On the night of the Emmy awards, the CN Tower in Toronto lit up gold in honor of the eleven Emmy wins the show brought home. In a fitting parallel to their selfies in front of the billboard, Levy and Reid took selfies in front of the hometown landmark, celebrating this little Canadian show that put a gay story at its heart—it was celebratory, as much as activism. But things can be both. And in wondering why the CN Tower was gold that night, maybe some other people also opened their minds to what the show stands for.
The ripples continued beyond the series, with the impact of Schitt’s Creek being felt long after it ended. This became apparent in one particularly moving interview on the UK TV show This Morning in 2021. In what was Dan Levy’s first UK TV appearance, he was interviewed by Phillip Schofield. The presenter—a staple of UK TV for over three decades—made headlines in 2019 when he came out as gay. In the interview with Levy, Schofield spoke movingly about what the show meant to him. Schitt’s Creek being part of that bigger cultural conversation, has been hugely important in those shifts, and Levy, as an out and proud queer creator, is intrinsic to those shifts.
Even in 2020, choosing to include queer narratives in a show made the show political. It’s a sad indictment of the broader state of television and the world, but it’s also true. By default, the show became political in its existence, even in its gentle way; the refusal within the show to be political made it all the more activist just by existing, simply as it was always meant to be.
You Are My Happy Ending: Schitt’s Creek and the Legacy of Queer Television by Emily Garside, published by Applause, is available now from all major booksellers. Please support queer-owned independent retailers.
