On Jan. 30, the beloved Catherine O’Hara died at 71, and the news of her death prompted an outpouring of love across social media. Now, just one month later, the iconic actor is getting her well-deserved flowers once again.
At last night’s Actor Awards, Catherine posthumously received the award for Female Actor in a Comedy Series. She won for her incredible work on The Studio, in which she plays a powerful and somewhat chaotic Hollywood executive (reportedly based on real-life producer Amy Pascal).
So, it was only right that the show’s star and creator, Seth Rogen, went up to collect the award on her behalf.
“I know she would have 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,” Seth began, taking it all in as the star-studded audience rose to their feet in honor of Catherine.
“I obviously have been reflecting on the time I was fortunate enough to spend with her, working with her, and something that I’ve just been marveling at over the last few weeks was really her ability to be generous and kind and gracious, while never ever minimizing her own talents and her own ability to contribute to the work that we were doing,” he said. “She knew she could destroy, and she wanted to destroy every day on set.”
Adorably, Seth — who also co-wrote and co-directed The Studio with his longtime collaborator, Evan Goldberg — shared some sweet insight into Catherine’s creativity and enthusiasm on the critically acclaimed project.
“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, and said, ‘Hello, I hope you’ll consider the following.’ And then there would be a completely rewritten version of the scene she was in,” Seth recalled. “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.”
He continued: “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.”
You can watch Seth’s full tribute to Catherine here, where you’ll see that many people in the room were visibly emotional. In particular, Catherine’s The Studio co-stars, Kathryn Hahn and Ike Barinholtz, really got me.
And it wasn’t just in the room where the tears were flowing. Online, fans praised Seth’s words and paid tribute to Catherine’s brilliance.
This is too much for a Monday morning. RIP, a true legend!