Catherine O’Hara was more than an actor to many: she was a “TV Mom”. Particularly to the queer community. On more than one occasion, she played a character that made it clear we were welcome and loved. Whether that was through campiness in her own performance or through the characters she played who embraced their queer children, Catherine O’Hara sent a clear message: you are loved for who you are.
As a performer, O’Hara embodied queer camp energy. Representation, or helping us as queer kids fumbling our way into queer adulthood, isn’t always about seeing other queer people…it’s also about people who make us feel seen. Catherine did that by bringing her quirky self, often in a fabulous yet impractical costume, to every role she played.
Queerness often means feeling like an outsider. In her early roles on SCTV, O’Hara played many larger-than-life women—divas, starlets, social climbers, and melodramatic oddballs. Later, in Christopher Guest’s movies with comedy partner Eugene Levy, she continued to play the outsider or weirdo. We laughed with her, not at her. These roles weren’t queer, but queer kids in the 90s loved that oddball comedy. When we didn’t fit in with mainstream teen romcoms, we searched for something different. O’Hara and Levy gave us a new group of outsiders to identify with.
Famously, she was a “Screen mom” in Home Alone. While not a perfect mother, many queer kids looked to the screen for parental stand-ins, especially if home was tricky. As outsiders, we often felt like Kevin, rebelling against the world, but we longed for a mother who would move mountains to return to us. We wanted to be shown love, no matter what. Even if our own families were fine, we still searched for signs of acceptance from other adults on TV and film; people who would love us just as we were.
O’Hara evolved into iconically fabulous figures such as Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice. As Delia, she sported wild outfits, and embodies eccentricities and full camp in all its glory. The performance emulated drag queen-like energy, blending exaggerated physicality with outfits to match. She was weird, but she was also weirdly aspirational. This set the stage for her later work as Moira Rose on Schitt’s Creek, an indelible character who launched a thousand queer Halloween costume tributes.
In the 90s, TV and film were full of ultra-thin, ultra-feminine, glossy women. O’Hara embodied non-conformity. It was special to see her go her own way. As a performer, she didn’t care about fitting in with industry standards of being “pretty” or “feminine”. Witnessing that felt liberating to anyone who didn’t fit into the heteronormative expectations of gender or sexuality. As she got older, she played women who looked their age, as she mentioned in her Emmys speech for Schitt’s Creek. Against so many pressures to conform, she was a beacon of hope. O’Hara gave us women who simply would not conform. They defied not just social norms, but also social niceties; through their demeanour, their wardrobes, or both.
It’s for her much-loved portrayal of Moira Rose that Catherine will be best remembered by many. Moira is the character who truly connected her to the queer community and it is a role that came to mean so much to multiple generations of queer folks.
Moria was the ultimate incarnation of all those fiercely camp women. She dressed for the runway of some indeterminate fashion show just to go to the local cafe. She had more wigs than most drag artists, and they hung in a perfect camp juxtaposition on her dreary motel bedroom wall. She spoke with an unidentifiable accent, and crucially, “Moria Rose” the star was a performance, and Moira, at home, was someone else. Camp performance art perfection.
In Moria, she reassured us that it’s okay to be weird. It’s okay to do your own damn thing. To be so fully yourself that nobody can question it. That’s real queer energy, and a role model so many needed. Yes, Moria’s outfits were ridiculous, but actually, her wearing them in a small-town diner felt like an analogy for being queer: standing out, looking different, and feeling different. But Moria reminded us all not to care what others might think, or more accurately, to be true to ourselves. Moria—wigs and heels and all—was being true to herself, even when the town around her didn’t understand her. She kept her head high, her wigs even higher, and did things her way. When we saw the town accept her for all that she was, it felt like queer affirmation. For those of us who spent too long in life trying to dress the “right way” or perform being a woman the “right way” it was meaningful to see Moria Rose be Moria Rose, and Catherine gave us that. We felt loved by Moria just as David and Alexis were. She gave us that too.
The queer community loved her for all of this. For the exaggerated affectations, for her delusions of stardom, for her over-the-top musical performances and showbiz anecdotes. But most of all, she was the mom so many needed.
For all of Moira’s foibles, she was a good mom, even if she sometimes didn’t know how to mom in the traditional way. Yes, she might have brought the wrong kid home from daycare once, she might have let her kids throw tranquilizers in her mouth…but she also never once questioned her queer son or who he was. Crucially, she never asked David to be someone else.
Moria showed her queer child unconditional love. She did it with humour, teasing about his romantic misadventures, but when it mattered, she also stood by him. She encouraged him in what she knew was the best relationship he’d ever had with Patrick. Moira’s “he sees you” line when talking about Patrick, the softness and encouragement to her queer son to pursue what she knew was the love of his life, is what so many queer viewers longed for in their own lives. Catherine O’Hara brought it to life with love and sincerity. Catherine’s own love and care transferred to us viewers in that, and we felt like she was the “TV mom” we needed.
Even dressed as the Pope at her son’s wedding, Moira Rose was what queer kids longed for: a mom fully invested, maybe a little too invested, in fashion. Still, when she officiated the wedding, queer kids watching her speech witnessed a mother boldly and publicly loving and supporting her queer son. Especially if we didn’t have that in our own lives, the affirmation and love she brought to Moira’s relationship with David was vital.
In real life, Catherine was chosen family to her screen partner of many years Eugene Levy and to her screen son Daniel, from when he was a young teen into adulthood, just as Moira was part of our lives and an example of love and care as we went from being queer kids to queer adults. As Daniel Levy wrote on Instagram, “Catherine was extended family before she ever played my family”. For many of us, she was there from our childhoods in Home Alone and still there for us as adults as our “TV Mom” in Schitt’s Creek. Catherine said many times her greatest achievement was being the mother of her children. I hope she knew she was also a screen mother to so many more of us who needed her and that we will miss her greatly.
By Emily Garside
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.
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