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Catherine O’Hara’s Hollywood legacy was further cemented in stone Sunday night at the 32nd Actor Awards.
The late actress was posthumously awarded the Best TV Comedy Actress award for her final role in the second season of “The Studio.”
“The Studio” co-star and creator Seth Rogen recognized O’Hara’s generosity and kindness as he accepted the award on her behalf.
Seth Rogen honored “The Studio” co-star Catherine O’Hara for her posthumous win at the 32nd annual Actor Awards Sunday in Los Angeles. (Eric Charbonneau)
O’Hara died in January from a pulmonary embolism, with rectal cancer as the underlying cause, according to a death certificate obtained by Digital. She was 71.
During an emotional speech, Rogen admitted he was asked to assume the “very sad honor” of accepting O’Hara’s award.
CATHERINE O’HARA DISCOVERED RARE MEDICAL CONDITION DURING ROUTINE DOCTOR VISIT WITH HUSBAND OVER 20 YEARS AGO
“I know she would’ve been honored to receive this award from her fellow performers, who I know she respected so much, she was such big fans of all of yours,” Rogen said.
Seth Rogen accepts the Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Comedy Series Award for “The Studio” on behalf of the late actress, Catherine O’Hara. (Matt Winkelmeyer)
He reflected on feeling “fortunate enough” to spend time working with her, and marveled at the fact that O’Hara had an “ability to be generous and kind and gracious, while never, ever minimizing her own talents — and her own ability to contribute to the work we were doing. She knew she could destroy, and she wanted to destroy every day we were on set.”
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Rogen continued, “I haven’t said this to the other actors because I didn’t want them to get ideas, but 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: ‘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% of the time, it made not just her character better, but it made the scene better and the entire show better as a whole. And she really showed that you can be a genius and be kind, and one of those things does not have to come at the expense of the other in any way, shape, or form.”
Seth Rogen celebrated the late Catherine O’Hara Sunday at the Actor Awards in Los Angeles. (Matt Winkelmeyer)
Rogen implored the audience, “If you have people in your lives that don’t know or work, if there are kids in your lives, or just people who are out of touch, or stupid or something, just show them O’Hara, dancing to Harry Belafonte in ‘Beetlejuice,’ show them O’Hara hurting her knee in ‘Best in Show,’ doing that amazing thing where she hobbles around, and tell the people as they’re laughing, that that’s Catherine O’Hara, and we were lucky that we got to live in a world where she’s so [generously] shared her talents with us. Thank you.”
Over 20 years before her death, O’Hara had discovered she had dextrocardia situs inversus — a rare medical condition during a routine doctor visit.
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“He calls us into his office and says, ‘You’re the first one I’ve met!'” O’Hara recalled during an episode of “Virtual Happy Hour” with Kathryn Hall in 2020. “I don’t even know the name, because I don’t want to know the name. Something cardio-inversus. And then dextrocardia and something-inversus.”
Catherine O’Hara died Jan. 30 in Los Angeles. She was 71. (Kate Green/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Pictures)
“People are going to think I’m so ignorant not to know this, but I kind of don’t want to know. Because I didn’t know before that.”
O’Hara’s career spanned decades, defining moments in Hollywood comedy — from her scene-stealing performance as the exasperated yet endearing mother in the blockbuster “Home Alone” films to her unforgettable turn as the eccentric Moira Rose in “Schitt’s Creek.”
Her recent TV performances in “The Last of Us” and “The Studio” earned her Emmy nominations for outstanding guest actress in a drama series and outstanding supporting actress in a comedy series.
O’Hara is survived by her husband, production designer Bo Welch, and their sons, Matthew and Luke, along with her siblings Michael O’Hara, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Maureen Jolley, Marcus O’Hara, Tom O’Hara and Patricia Wallice.
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Digital’s Lauryn Overhultz contributed to this report.
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