Catherine O’Hara Didn’t Tell People She Had COVID While Shooting ‘The Studio'

I returned to in-person work at my day job in November 2021. It wasn’t easy for many reasons. Chief among them was that I had been a father for about six months. Not only did I not want to leave my kids, but… how do I explain this? Do you remember that an incredibly deadly virus was attacking humanity at that time? It’s true! It was still going at that point! And going to a theater where people were going to be shouting “Bottled water” into my mouth didn’t seem ideal, even with masks and a vaccine.

Luckily, there were safeguards in place. Employees at Broadway theaters were required to get regularly tested at sites located in Times Square, and the tests were free. Mask mandates were in effect, but customers couldn’t be trusted to keep them on, even with COVID Safety Officials walking around to ensure folks followed the rules. Everything felt tense all the time. Then, eventually, that tense feeling went away, as did the masks and testing centers. Now, celebrities are talking about not testing themselves for COVID despite knowing they have it because they have to keep a show going.

That’s what happened with Catherine O’Hara while shooting The Studio. I’ve very much enjoyed the show (if you enjoyed it and haven’t read the inside scoop we snagged from an actual Hollywood assistant, do yourself a favor and read it now)! It feels like a brutally honest look at Hollywood’s insane infrastructure, led by great acting and sharp writing. I’m also a sucker for Seth Rogen and would like to one day be a cog (but, like, a knowable cog) in that infrastructure, so they had me from episode one. O’Hara is stellar in the show, despite only being in a handful of episodes. She’s great in everything, which is why reading her talk about having COVID on The Studio gave me… pause (and I’d rather have hands *rimshot*).

O’Hara sat down for an interview with Variety about her work on The Studio and The Last of Us. When asked what it’s like to have both shows air at the same time, O’Hara volunteered information about having COVID while making the former. “I got COVID at The Sphere, and that’s all I could see watching that one. I can see my posture is just [droops her body],” she explained. “I didn’t test because we were trying to finish shooting, and we were leaving town in a day or two, so we had to shoot all those scenes.” Reading that, five years removed from the start of the pandemic, is an odd experience.

Things are different now, there is no question. But it still feels like an unnecessary risk. But I also understand how much it would have hurt the production to delay a location shoot like that with only a couple of days left. It’s all complicated (I’m sure someone will tell me it isn’t), and I’m not going to pretend like I have the right answer (I’m sure someone will tell me they do), but to say it gave me whiplash would be an understatement. It isn’t helped by what O’Hara claims she did to make sure others were… “safe.”

“I just kept my distance,” O’Hara continued. “At one point, I had a water bottle down on the floor, and Evan [Goldberg] came over and he said, “Oh, do you want your water?” “No, don’t pick it up!” I just knew, like, ‘Don’t touch anything!’ Thank God I didn’t give it to anyone.” Wild! It is good that she didn’t give it to anyone (as far as she knows). I think this is really just about me coming to terms with how far removed we are from the early stages. This is the kind of admission that would have garnered more negative attention just two years ago. Now, it’s a small segment in a larger interview.

O’Hara did answer the interviewer’s question, saying, “I was very lucky, and they came out at the same time; I’m meeting friends, they go, ‘Wow, are you in everything?’ No! I haven’t worked in, like, a year!” And then the interview got back to talking about prestige television.