Seth Rogan has accepted Catherine O'Hara's posthumous Actor Award win at last night's ceremony.
O'Hara, who died in January aged 71, won the Female Actor award in a Comedy Series for her role in Apple TV's The Studio, which Rogan co-created and co-starred in. She was award the posthumous accolade at the Actor Awards for her role as former studio head, Patty Leigh, with Rogan to accept the award on her behalf.
Rogan had previously paid tribute to O'Hara, hailing her as an "utter genius". She died following a pulmonary embolism, with an underlying cause of rectal cancer.
“I know she would have been honoured to receive this award from her fellow performers, who I know she respected so much,” Rogan said. “She was such big fans of all of yours".
He continued: “I, obviously, have been reflecting on the time I was fortunate enough to spend with her and working with her, and something that I’ve just been marvelling 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".
“She knew she could destroy, and she wanted to destroy every day on set".
Seth Rogan also went on to share an anecdote involving O'Hara which he had not previously told "other actors", as he "didn't want them to get ideas".
“Pretty much every evening before she had a shooting day on our show, she would email me and [co-creator] Evan [Goldberg] an email that always was pretty similar, and it said, ‘Hello, I hope you’ll consider the following.’ And then there would be a completely rewritten version of the scene she was in", Rogan revealed.
“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. “And 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".
“So I guess I’ll just leave you with this,” he added. “If you have people in your lives that don’t know her work, if they’re kids in your lives, or just people who are out of touch or stupid or something, just show them O’Hara dancing to Harry Belafonte and Beetlejuice, show them O’Hara hurting her knee in Best in Show and doing that amazing thing where she hobbles around, and tell the people, as they are laughing, that that’s Catherine O’Hara, and we were lucky that we got to live in a world where she so generously shared her talents with us".
Along with The Studio, Catherine O'Hara also starred in Schitt's Creek and the classic Home Alone movies, which saw her co star alongside MaCauley Culkin, who also paid tribute to her following her death.
"Mama. I thought we had time. I wanted more. I wanted to sit in a chair next to you. I heard you but I had so much more to say. I love you. I’ll see you later", Culkin said.
See that in full here.
