Why Catherine O'Hara Quit Saturday Night Live After Just One Week

Canadian actress Catherin O'Hara was bumping up against "Saturday Night Live" for years before she landed a job on the show. Early in her career, O'Hara performed with the Toronto branch of the famed comedy troupe The Second City, serving as an understudy for comedienne Gilda Radner. O'Hara stepped into Rander's shoes when the latter left to get a job on "Saturday Night Live." The remaining Toronotoites stayed back and founded their own sketch comedy series, "SCTV," which debuted in 1976. "SCTV" proved to be fertile ground for upcoming comedy superstars. In addition to O'Hara, John Candy, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Martin Short, Joe Flaherty, and Harold Ramis all broke through. "SCTV" was huge in Canada, but remained secondary to "Saturday Night Live" down in the United States. 

"SCTV" lasted for six seasons and ran 135 episodes, while "Saturday Night Live" (beyond all expectations) persists to this day. Three members of "SCTV" also ended up becoming regular members of the "SNL" cast: Short, Robin Duke, and Tony Rosato. 

It seems that Catherine O'Hara was also hired in the early 1980s to make the commute to New York and work on "SNL." In a new interview with People Magazine, O'Hara revealed that "SCTV" only haphazardly renewed contracts, and that there were long breaks in filming that required stop-gap jobs to fill. "SNL" was to fill one of the gaps. A sense of loyalty, however, got the better of O'Hara and she (one might say wisely) remained with her home troupe. 

It was pretty simple. O'Hara, while waiting for "SCTV" to be picked up again in between seasons, signed onto "Saturday Night Live." When "SCTV" was picked up again, however, O'Hara dropped the "SNL" gig and went back north. She explained it thus: 

"Our producer would get a deal with a network, and we'd have a show for a season or two, and then that deal would go away. There'd be a break, then we'd do the show again. [...] I got asked to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' And of course, I said yes. Who doesn't want to do that?" [When 'SCTV' was picked up again], basically I said, 'Oh, sorry, I gotta go be with my family.'"

O'Hara left the show before she had a chance to actually be on it. Her loyalty to "SCTV" took precedence over the higher-profile American job. She did feel bad, however, about leaving the "SNL" producers in a lurch. "Yeah," she said, "not cool to take a job and leave it. You know what I mean?" Luckily, her "SCTV" co-star Robin Duke was able to fill in for her, and everything worked out. 

O'Hara has regularly appeared alongside her "SCTV" cast members in feature films and other TV shows ever since. She had multiple scenes with John Candy in the 1990 hit "Home Alone." Both O'Hara and Martin Short have worked with director Tim Burton, and the two played multiple roles in the 2012 animated film "Frankenweenie." O'Hara and Levy have each been in several Christopher Guest films, and they had a killer run on the hit TV series "Schitt's Creek," which ran from 2015 to 2020. 

O'Hara has long been loyal to the cast "SCTV," and remains so to this day.