Catherine O'Hara on 'Home Alone 2' and her sketch comedy beginnings (1992 interview) | Fresh Air

"Home Alone 2" and Macaulay Culkin

• 🎬 Catherine O'Hara reprised her role as the mother in "Home Alone 2: Lost in New York," where her character again loses her son Kevin at the airport.
• 🌟 She noted that Macaulay Culkin himself remained the "same kid" despite his fame, but the people around him (fans, visitors) treated him differently due to his "giant aura of success."

Early Career and Second City

• 🎭 O'Hara's comedic beginnings stemmed from a funny family environment where making each other laugh was a way to get attention.
• 🇨🇦 She started at Second City Toronto, not Chicago, where she was hired by John Candy for the touring company.
• 💡 She became an understudy for Gilda Radner, even getting a perm to look like her, and faced pressure to imitate Radner's characters exactly, including an early version of Emily Litella.

SCTV Characters and Impersonations

• 🎤 O'Hara enjoyed playing "cocky, untalented people," notably creating Lola Heatherton, a "temperamental and talentless singer" for SCTV.
• 🌟 Lola Heatherton's inspiration came from Lola Falana's emotional singing and Joey Heatherton's look, combining their names.
• 🎭 Her impersonations, like those of Meryl Streep and Katharine Hepburn, were typically for specific, one-off sketches and required intense, temporary preparation rather than regular performance.

Personal Life and Career Turning Point

• 💔 O'Hara decided to leave SCTV around 1981 or 1982 to focus on her neglected personal life, hoping to find time for dating.
• 🏡 After a period of depression while living alone in Toronto, she received an offer for the movie "Beetlejuice," which she saw as a sign to be productive.
• ❤️ On the set of "Beetlejuice," she met her future husband, a production designer named Bo Welch, turning her career move into a personal success.

The PMS Video

• 🎥 She co-created a short film about PMS with Andrea Martin for David Letterman's Thanksgiving Film Festival, receiving a budget of $10,000-$15,000.
• 😂 The film depicted two women making a movie about PMS while experiencing PMS themselves, leading to chaotic and nonsensical results.
• 👏 This video garnered more recognition than anything else either she or Andrea Martin had done, notably convincing many men that PMS existed.