Catherine O’Hara was one of the stars of the hit Apple TV+ show, The Studio. In Season 1, she played Patty Leigh, the former Hollywood studio head who mentored Seth Rogen’s character. When speaking with The Times of London on April 3, Rogen addressed how the series will handle her death in the upcoming season, after the actress passed away in January at age 71.
“If anything, we’re acknowledging the idea that we are a little anchorless,” Rogen said. “But, honestly, that is a part of life and what we all experience. And so while we try to not dwell too much on heavy themes in this show, they will be there in this second season. We are not ignoring it.”
Rogen’s creative partner, Evan Goldberg, also addressed the situation. “It has been an unbelievable challenge, obviously emotionally, dealing with the loss,” he said. “But also when it comes to the show itself, we wrote it for her to be there. We had it all set and the shock waves permeate throughout the entire new season. It’s been difficult.”
Rogen accepted a posthumous award for O’Hara on March 1. In his speech, he explained how involved she was in the show and how deeply she cared about her character.
“Pretty much every evening before she had a shooting day on our show, she would email me and Evan an email that always was pretty similar,” Rogen explained. “It said, ‘Hello, I hope you'll consider the following,’ and then there would be a completely rewritten version of the scene she was in. And literally, 100 percent of the time, it made not just her character better, but it made the scene better and the entire show better as a whole.”
He went on to praise the star’s impressive body of work. “If you have people in your lives that don't know her work, show them O'Hara dancing to Harry Belafonte in Beetlejuice. Show them O'Hara hurting her knee in Best in Show and doing that amazing thing where she hobbles around. And tell the people, as they are laughing, that that's Catherine O'Hara, and we were lucky that we got to live in a world where she so generously shared her talents with us.”
