The late Catherine O’Hara received an emotional tribute from her The Studio co-star Seth Rogen at yesterday’s Directors Guild Awards in Beverly Hills, California. On stage to accept the gong for Best Comedy Series alongside longtime creative partner Evan Goldberg — having beaten directors of The Bear, Hacks, and The White Lotus via an episode titled “The Oner” — the 43-year-old was quick to mention his beloved collaborator, who sadly passed away aged 71 last month, describing O’Hara as “our idol since we were children.”
“Home Alone, honestly, is like the movie that made me wanna make movies in a lot of ways. In that movie, she’s always yelling ‘Kevin, Kevin!’ and on set she would always be yelling, ‘Evan, Evan!’ and every time she did it we were like, ‘It’s like Home Alone.’ […] The best part of her is she showed that you can be an utter genius and also the nicest person in the entire world. Every day, we work very hard to make the show good enough to warrant her time and her presence. So ultimately, we would like to thank the DGA for this, but we would mostly like to thank Catherine O’Hara.”
Released in 1990, Christmas classic Home Alone cast O’Hara as the mother of Macauley Culkin’s Kevin McCallister, Kate, who forgets to wake her young son up for a flight to Paris, thus leaving him in the family’s massive detached house to survive the holidays alone. She reprized the character in 1992’s sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, adding a great deal of warmth and underplayed mania to every scene she was in. Cut to 2025 and Rogen finally managed to work with O’Hara in Apple TV’s aforementioned Hollywood satire, in which the latter portrayed Patty Leigh, mentor to the former’s Matt Remick. Rogen was also one of the first people to publicly react to his hero’s death when the news initially broke just over a week ago. On Instagram, the Knocked Up and Sausage Party favorite called O’Hara “hysterical, kind, intuitive” and “generous.” He added: “We’re all lucky we got to live in a world with her in it.”
Hollywood Grieves a Monumental Loss

Catherine O’Hara in sitcom Schitt’s CreekCBC

The hole left behind by O’Hara is a significant one. A comedic powerhouse since the mid-1970s, she touched the lives of every generation through her versatility and ability to stay relevant. Through the gothic auteur Tim Burton, she traversed colorful fantasy worlds in The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beetlejuice, and Frankenweenie; at HBO, the star notched up credits in both Six Feet Under and The Last of Us. In the past decade, though, her portrayal of Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek was where most fans got their O’Hara fix, for which she won a Primetime Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award.

But when it comes to her legacy, in her own words, she’d rather be remembered as a loving mother to her two sons.

Release Date

March 25, 2025

Network

Apple TV+

Writers

Peter Huck