Photo:Jessica Chou
Jessica Chou
Dan Levyjust pulled the Wheel of Fortune card. The Canadian actor — best known as David Rose on the beloved 2015–2020 sitcomSchitt’s Creek— recently made his feature directorial debut with the Netflix dramaGood Grief.Now he’s having his tarot cards read in West Hollywood.
“I don’t worry about the future,” Levy, 40, says. “I am a worrier about thepresent.” Luckily, one of his closest friends, Trevor Ballin, is a tarot reader. (“Dan is actually a little bit psychic,” Ballin says later when Levy is out of earshot.)
“Every six months I get my cards read,” Levy says. “It’s a recalibration of where I’m headed.”
Where he’s headed, Ballin says, is up — and over a little, towards love. “There is tremendous possibility right now,” Ballin tells him. “Savor this moment. And take a break.”
He pulls another card: “This is the year you’ll meet someone.”.
But first, Levy may have to take a moment to breathe. “I think I’m just pre-programmed to work. And I’m only now freeing up some space to, hopefully, meet somebody,” he says, pushing up his thick black frames. “The cards are screaming at me, ‘You’re gonna win big! Accept any and all dates!’ ” He pauses with a chuckle. “Cut to, me as the next Bachelor.”
Folks began to ask where he got his frames. “I kind of felt guilty telling like a 12-year-old you to go and spend hundreds of dollars on, you know, some Tom Ford frames.” So he foundedDL Eyewear. He wants to clarify its beginnings. “It’s not a celebrity brand because, well, it was founded before I was a celebrity.”
The company now offersdozens of frames— sunglasses at $150, optical frames at $140 — and fans are still asking where he gets his. They also ask where he gets his clothes. But those will never bear his initials on the label.
“I would never go into clothing,” he says. “Because I don’t I don’t know about design. I don’t know about designing clothes, I love wearing clothes, sure.” He knows he’d be, like the hundredth celebrity to start designing fashion. “But I don’t know if having good style means that you should take a job from somebody who has gone to school for it.”
Asked about the possibility of aSchitt’s Creekmovie, Levy says: “One hundred percent…I don’t know.”
The cast of ‘Schitt’s Creek’ Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Dan Levy and Annie Murphy.
Levy reveals that he almost got to play another role which would have lived deep in the consciousness of everyone last summer: one of the Kens in the 2023 blockbusterBarbie. He had to turn it down due to scheduling conflicts.
“That was a tough, tough day,” Levy says. “It’s not like it isn’t one of the biggest movies of all time. Does it haunt me when I sleep at night? Sometimes.”
In the casting of Evans, whom he had never met, Levy says, “His character has such a small amount of time physically in the film. And yet lives in almost every scene of the movie. So it took someone larger than life, someone like Luke, who could hold that space in the first like 15 minutes of the film.” He pauses. “We needed Gaston,” he says with a laugh, referencing Evans' turn in the live-action remake ofBeauty and the Beast.But, really, the movie is a love story about friendship, Levy says.
“As someone who’s single a lot, your friends are the loves of your life.” Levy says. “The friends I have are lifers. I love them dearly, to the point where I wrote a movie about that love and how it can save us in the hardest of times. I wanted the romance to be on the sidelines for once.”
Netflix
Dealing with his own grief after the 2020 death of his grandmother, Patricia Divine, was a steep learning curve that Levy drew upon when writing the script. “I was asking a lot of questions: whether I was doing it properly or if I was feeling enough or if I was honoring the loss, the people,” he recalls. “And then my dog passed away.”
The double loss dovetailed with his 40th birthday.
So his cards say take a break. “My brain is never still, but the tarot cards are telling me to stop. I don’t know why I struggle so much. But the cards say I have to say “yes” now?”
Ballin offers encouragement. ”It’s time to celebrate. You will meet someone who will inspire you," he says.
Now Levy is totally in. “Well, the answer is yes then!”
source: people.com
