Laurie Metcalf arrived for the first day of filming Netflix’s “Big Mistakes” with something she needed to get off her chest. She doesn’t recall where she said it, but it was probably in the hair and makeup trailer sitting next to series co-creator and her co-star Dan Levy.
“We had just barely met at that point, but I told him, ‘I have extremely big shoes to fill, and I know that in my heart because I’m playing your second TV mom,’” Metcalf tells Variety.
She, of course, was referring to Levy’s previous TV mom, played by the late comedy legend Catherine O’Hara in “Schitt’s Creek.” In O’Hara’s hands, the character of Moira Rose was a larger-than-life presence in her son’s life, learning to love him more than she loved the spotlight — or at least just as much. In “Big Mistakes,” Metcalf is tasked with playing a similarly oversized onscreen role, and she wanted Levy to know she understood the weight of that responsibility.
“We never talked about comparisons or anything like that, and I think he wanted dynamics to be different,” Metcalf says. “But I wanted to be there for his character, just as much as Moira Rose was for him in ‘Schitt’s Creek.’”
As frenetic mayoral candidate Linda Morelli, Metcalf is both a blessing and a curse to her son Nicky (Levy) and daughter Morgan (Taylor Ortega). The siblings definitely don’t need the level of stress she brings, as they unintentionally descend further into a world of organized crime. Linda is brash, carries her moral superiority as a badge of honor and fiercely protects her children, whether they like it or not. She’s a force in the Morelli family, but she’s hardly the only difficult mother in Metcalf’s recent filmography.
