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Few friendships in Hollywood feel as quietly profound as the one between Catherine O’Hara and ‘Schitt’s Creek’ star Emily Hampshire. Their bond stretches far beyond the fictional town of ‘Schitt’s Creek’, all the way back to a 1999 Canadian crime drama called ‘The Life Before This’, where the two actresses first worked together. In the years that followed, O’Hara became not just a respected peer but a quiet pillar of support in Hampshire’s life, including a moment that helped reshape her career in the United States.Hampshire has often spoken about how meaningful it was to reunite with O’Hara on ‘Schitt’s Creek’, this time as Stevie Budd opposite Moira Rose. Their paths had crossed years earlier, but the gap between independent Canadian projects and a major international hit like ‘Schitt’s Creek’ meant that O’Hara’s rise and her own emerging career sat in different orbits. When the show took off, the shared experience of navigating a sudden wave of global attention only deepened their mutual respect and affection.
Emily Hampshire recalls how Catherine O’Hara helped her
When Hampshire decided she wanted to move from Canada to the U.S., she faced the usual tangle of immigration paperwork and the need for letters of support from well‑known figures. She reached out to O’Hara with a simple request to vouch for her in the green‑card process, and the response was instant and characteristically generous. “I’d emailed her to ask her to help me get my green card,” the 44‑year‑old actress told E! News, explaining that she needed notable people to attest to her talents. “She immediately responded, ‘Of course, anything.’ She was just so wonderful,” Hampshire recalled. “That’s the essence of her character. She was genuinely kind to everyone.”
Friendship between Catherine O’Hara and Emily Hampshire
Their working relationship deepened over the seven seasons of ‘Schitt’s Creek’, where O’Hara’s Moira Rose and Hampshire’s Stevie Budd became part of the same unlikely, mismatched family. Even after the cameras stopped rolling, Hampshire has spoken openly about O’Hara’s warmth and how that kindness showed up again and again, both on and off set. In interviews, she has described their connection as something that began in the early days of her career and simply never faded, which makes the story of the green‑card help feel less like a one‑off favor and more like a natural extension of who O’Hara was.For fans of ‘Schitt’s Creek’, the story also adds a gentle layer to how they see O’Hara, someone already admired for her sharp comic timing and everywoman vulnerability. Knowing that she quietly stepped in to help a younger colleague with such a practical, life‑changing step, using her name and influence without fanfare, only reinforces the sense that her generosity is real and consistent. For Hampshire, that support was more than a bureaucratic formality; it was a reminder that the industry could still be shaped by kindness, one email and one “of course” at a time. Go to Source
