Eugene Levy On Nissan Super Bowl Commercial, ‘Schitt’s Creek’, And More

An unforeseen challenger has entered the ring to emerge as a heavy favorite for best performance in a 2022 Super Bowl commercial, comedy legend Eugene Levy.

In Nissan’s Super Bowl 56 ad titled “Thrill Driver”, Levy checks a box he hasn’t been able to thus far in his career, action star. The campaign slots Levy with Marvel fan favorites Brie Larson, Danai Gurira and Dave Bautista.

Forbes recently caught up with the Schitt’s Creek star/co-creator and SCTV alum to discuss taking the driver’s seat for Nissan, his sensational and timeless chemistry with actress Catherine O’Hara, being terrified Schitt’s Creek wouldn’t work out for his son Dan, and what the world has missed out on after losing John Candy too soon.

“They actually turned me into an action [star]. The premise of this thing was just so much fun,” Levy told Forbes of Nissan’s 60-second spot featuring the all-new 2023 Nissan Z and the all-new, all-electric 2023 Nissan Ariya that will air during the fourth quarter on Sunday. “It’s just something that doesn’t come across your desk every day, certainly not my desk. So this was fun right from the get-go.

“I actually loved the idea and it was a very kind of complicated idea and in the very beginning you’re just hoping that, ‘Well, I hope they can execute well.’ And they did.”

O’Hara, Levy’s longtime performance partner from SCTV to Christopher Guest films like Best in Show to Schitt’s Creek, makes a cameo in the ad.

“First of all, you have to talk about her talent because she’s probably one of the most, if not the best, comedic actresses in the business,” the Emmy-winning actor said when asked about the on-screen magic between the two that’s spanned multiple generations. “And she’s been doing brilliant stuff for the 40-something odd years that I’ve known her.

“The reason we work so well together is because we really kind of have the same working style. Catherine and I don’t really consider ourselves comedians. In real life, we’re pretty normal people; what we love doing is getting our laughs through our characters that we play.

“Catherine does it so [deeply], she’s so chameleon-like in her work. She actually kind of becomes these characters and finds a way of making them funny in a way that not a lot of actresses can do. We’ve found, again because we work the same way, because we take our work seriously and in trying to get our laughs trhough our characters and keeping everything grounded in the kind of comedy that we do, it’s just been easy to work with. It’s like we finish each other’s sentences in a scene.”

Schitt’s Creek took the world by storm and to binge heaven during the now early days of the pandemic. Initially, when approached by his son Dan about creating and starring in the show together, Eugene found himself petrified for his son over the massive undertaking.

“When we first got together, when he asked me if I wanted to kind of work with him on this idea, I thought this would never happen because he really hasn’t relied on me for anything,” Levy said. “Whether it was a school play… I would always say, ‘Do you want me to run lines with you?’ ‘No, no. I’ve got it.’

“So when this thing came up it was like, ‘Oh my god, we’re going to be working together. And as I’ve said, it really didn’t matter what the idea was. As a dad, I would have hopped on this thing with him and just loved the experience.

“So we started doing it together and at one point, really in the early on days of this, I kind of had a bit of a nightmare. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, thinking, ‘What if he doesn’t have it? What if it turns out he doesn’t have the talent to do something as [demanding] as a weekly television comedy? What do I do? Do I tell him that this is not going to work because you just don’t have it? Or do we just continue working on this idea, knowing nothing will come of it? And you think Sophie had a choice…

“So, I learned … once we started getting into the work, that wow, he’s really got some great chops for writing, and that was reassuring, beyond reassuring. I thought, ‘Wow, he really is a good writer,’ as we’re going through our pilot. And as an actor, as a performer in it, he really surprised me at how good he was at developing an amazingly interesting and funny character.

“So yeah, that moment of, ‘Wow, this kid is so much better than I ever thought he could be… I always knew he was talented because I watched him on MTV for eight years up in Canada and he had a great presence on live TV, really bright, able to hold his own and be funny and interesting, but a weekly half-hour comedy is a different kind of animal and he proved early on that boy he’s going to be a great partner on this.”

Another SCTV alum Eugene worked with, John Candy, tragically died of a heart attack in 1994 at the age of 43. Like Candy’s countless fans, Levy wanted to see more from John and perhaps witness his career take a different turn.

“I think John would have made that leap from comedy to drama quite readily,” Eugene said. “We kind of saw it in JFK, Oliver Stone’s movie, where John was in that briefly but just an amazing character in that. John was a great actor.

“He spent his life doing comedy, but he was acting. He had moments in Planes, Trains and Automobiles that just destroyed you emotionally and made you laugh out loud. John as a person just transcended the screen. I think that’s why people just loved him so much and loved his work so much.”