The “Home Alone” star remembered the late actress alongside “Schitt’s Creek” stars Dan Levy and Annie Murphy.

Macaulay Culkin honors ‘my mom’ Catherine O’Hara at Emmys tribute

The “Home Alone” star remembered the late actress alongside “Schitt’s Creek” stars Dan Levy and Annie Murphy.

September 14, 2026 11:08 p.m. ET

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Catherine O’Hara at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Credit:

Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty

- Catherine O’Hara’s costars Macaulay Culkin, Dan Levy, and Annie Murphy paid tribute to their late TV mom at the 2026 Emmys.

- The beloved Emmy winner died in January 2026 at age 71.

- O’Hara was nominated for 10 Emmys over her life and won two.

Catherine O’Hara was honored at the 2026 Emmys, where Macaulay Culkin, Dan Levy, and Annie Murphy — all of whom played her children on screens big and small — paid tribute to the late *Home Alone* and *Schitt’s Creek* star.

The beloved comedic actress, who was nominated for 10 Emmys in her lifetime and won two, died in January 2026 at age 71 after a brief illness.

“Catherine O’Hara, we remember her as the forgetful mother, right? But we’ll never forget about her,” said Culkin. “There are all kinds of words I could use to describe Catherine. She was encouraging, she was warm, she was funny. But the word that I think of is ‘Mama.’ She wasn’t just a wife and mother to Bo and Matthew and Luke. She was... she was my mom. She was our mama, and by extension, she was all of our mama. By the way, call your mother tonight, for real.”

O’Hara is survived by her husband, production designer and director Bo Welch, and their sons Matthew and Luke.

Catherine O’Hara and Macaulay Culkin in ‘Home Alone’.

Don Smetzer/20th Century Fox

Culkin added that, “Like a good mom, she always showed up when I asked her to, ‘cause that was Catherine. That was what she did. She showed up, and this is the best that we can do for her tonight. We’re showing up for her. So, she may have forgotten me... twice, but we will always remember her.”

O’Hara famously played Kate, the fed-up mother to Culkin’s precocious Kevin, in *Home Alone* and *Home Alone 2: Lost in New York*. Both holiday staples feature O’Hara iconically screaming her son’s name in transit as soon as she realizes she and her husband (John Heard) have left him behind on their respective trips to Paris and the Big Apple, followed by a heartfelt mother-son reunion.

Levy and Murphy, who played *Schitt’s Creek* siblings David and Alexis, the spoiled adult children of Moira (O’Hara) and Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy), also reflected on their offscreen relationships with their TV mom.

“Catherine’s laugh was a perpetual ‘yes, and...’” began Murphy. “It challenged anyone who heard it to join in and be as delighted as she was. And she spread that delight everywhere.”

Murphy recalled receiving well wishes from fans who similarly felt a profound loss in the wake of O’Hara’s death, from a note that read, “She was so special. I hope you’re doing okay,” to a hug from “an extremely gruff-looking gas station attendant.”

Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Annie Murphy, and Daniel Levy in ‘Schitt’s Creek’.

“These are only a very few of the interactions I’ve been lucky enough to have that remind me how profoundly Catherine has impacted the world,” said Murphy. “And it’s because she brought us joy.”

Levy, who co-created *Schitt’s Creek* with dad Eugene, shared with the audience, “The greatest lesson I learned from Catherine, both professionally and personally, was to always say yes.”

“Say yes to her instincts, all of them.... She is miles ahead of you, and you will learn to catch up,” he said. “Say yes to helping her build a TV character over the age of 60 that wears leather miniskirts...and speaks in a strange, sometimes unintelligible transatlantic accent, and know that she will *not* scare an audience away. Say yes to that rewrite she emails you, sometimes the night before: ‘Dear Dan, some thoughts.’ It will always improve the story. Say yes to the concept of a wig wall. Say yes to her asking to wear a wig as a hat.”

Levy learned to “say yes to giving her space to experiment and create. It will amaze you on a daily basis, and it will change your life.... Say yes to her dinner invites and her stories and her wisdom, and her generosity. Those are the things you will hold on to the tightest. Always say yes to any opportunity to revel in the presence of greatness.”

Dan Levy remembers his 'Schitt's Creek' costar Catherine O'Hara 2 months after her death: 'A collective loss'

See all the winners at the 2026 Emmy Awards

O’Hara told **’s sister publication PEOPLE in 2016 that she first met the senior Levy in the 1970s, when she was waitressing at Second City in Toronto, where she would regularly watch her future costar on stage.

“I joined the following summer, when I was 19,” recalled *The Studio* actress.

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Asked whether her relationship with Levy ever resembled one of a married couple — given how often they’d play spouses, generally in Christopher Guest films — O’Hara said she “would love to think that we continue to challenge each other like a good married couple would do, and there are still many things that we don’t know about each other that we’re still discovering.”

The *Beetlejuice* star noted the “long stretch” during which she and Levy would “see each other socially” but rarely worked alongside each other.

“It was only when Eugene and Chris wrote those improvised movies [*Waiting for Guffman*, *Best In Show*] that we ended up playing a married couple a few times, and it was just great. I’d like to think we’re a different couple every time,” she said.

About two months after O’Hara’s death, Dan Levy appeared on *The Tonight Show*, during which he referred to her death as “a collective loss.”

“She was the greatest,” Levy told host Jimmy Fallon. “She’s irreplaceable.”

Culkin, for his part, told *Gentleman’s Journal* that O’Hara’s death “hit me pretty good.”

**Watch EW and PEOPLE’s interview with *The Pitt* star Supriya Ganesh on the Emmys red carpet below.**

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Source: “EW Emmys”