How Moira's Wig Collection Became an Essential Character on 'Schitt's Creek'
Waving farewell to television’s Moira Rose (Catherine O’Hara) is hard. Schitt's Creek's six-year run coincided with political turmoil and uncertainty, offering the TV equivalent of a warm hug when we needed it most. But all good things must come to an end, including this tale of riches to rags and the town that taught a formerly wealthy clan how to thrive without bucketfuls of cash. Of the few things the family kept in their newfound destitution, matriarch Moira's bizarre wig collection took on a life of its own, cementing her as one of the best dressed, most recognizable television characters of the decade
“I just asked if I could wear lots of wigs,” O’Hara explains in Best Wishes, Warmest Regards: A Schitt’s Creek Farewell, a one-hour documentary that aired after the series finale. The actress wanted to break free of the clichéd rich woman archetype, and show co-creator Dan Levy credits her with constructing Moira’s explosive personality. From her unusual accent and obscure lexicon to socialite Daphne Guinness as sartorial inspiration, what makes Moira so Moira is all O’Hara’s doing.
Schitt’s Creek hairstylist Ana Sorys joined the show in season 3 and reveled in tracking down pieces for Moira’s collection—and saving the best and most audacious for last. Here, she talks through the time crunch she faced making the Met Gala-worthy wedding wig, the origin of some fan favorites, and the behind-the-scenes alchemy that brought these looks to life. Moira’s girls deserve nothing less.
How to Choose a Wig for Moira Rose
“For Moira, it's a mood,” Sorys says. “It has nothing to do with what she wants to look like and everything to do with how she feels in the moment.” The wigs weren't planned in advance, but Sorys always had a selection on hand for O'Hara to choose from during costume fittings. “I knew what she would pull off and have fun with,” Sorys says, estimating she had around 200 wigs at her disposal by the time the show ended.
The hairstylist tracked down pieces year-round and purchased wigs from across the globe. Anime styles came from Japan—a navy Sailor Moon wig Levy bought sadly did not make the cut—and press trips to New York resulted in a major haul of obscure items. Closer to home, Sorys found some “amazingly odd wigs you would never see anywhere else” at a store in London, Ontario.
Bringing in colored wigs was entirely Sorys’s idea—until season 3, all were natural hair colors. They started with bubblegum pink for “Murder Mystery,” and O’Hara ultimately kept the the fan-favorite as a souvenir. Season 4 brought mint (“Only she could get away with green,” Sorys gushes) and 5 introduced a crop of bizarre, forest-green curls.
Make It Weird
Part of the Moira aesthetic is the absurd—those little touches purposefully out of place. Sorys had little time to put together Moira’s season 6 tourism video look, but that didn’t hamper her creativity. “She wanted all these weird pieces sticking out. I chopped a wig up and sewed white highlights into it.” This caused confusion on set, when the director asked if bits were meant to be sticking up. O’Hara’s response, per Sorys: “Yes, that is strategically placed there to look weird."
The Crows
On the rare occasion wigs were planned in advance, O’Hara still had a hand in conception. For Moira’s big comeback, The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening, O’Hara wanted “a half Sopranos-style hairline and some texture in the back.” A long, curly, Loretta Lynn-style wig was transformed into the short Dr. Clara Mandrake number. “I remember being in the trailer one evening and cutting it up until it looked like feathers,” Sorys explains. “The texture I had given it, cutting it from really long to short, mimicked feathers in the weirdest way.” O’Hara was thrilled with the result, and the experience sums up their working relationship: “She has a trust I'm going to create what she'll like,” Sorys says. “One of my favorite things in the world is bringing her idea to life and her being so happy with it.”
Improv Hour
Though she ends Schitt’s Creek on a career high, the season 6 premiere sees Moira's big comeback in tatters after the Crows movie is pulled, and she spends a week in the motel closet as a result. That Sia-style blonde extravaganza originally resembled poodle hair, but was transformed into a more off-kilter style worn “backwards and upside-down” for Moira’s spiral. “She tried that wig on and we were killing ourselves laughing in the trailer,” Sorys says.
The Personal Touch
"Did you put Kristen with Robin? They don't like each other," Moira cries when her wigs are packed in the pilot. In the Season 6 premiere, as Roland (Chris Elliott) carries Moira from a potential motel fire, she screams at him to save her girls. More than an accessory, each wig has a distinct personality and name, and “Lorna” and “Cindy” aren’t randomly christened by the writers. Sorys explains that O’Hara hosted a viewing party for the season 6 premiere at her house and included a surprise shout-out to her guests. “She invited the people she named the wigs after. Her friends sat there and watched their names being called out.”
O’Hara also paid homage to SCTV and For Your Consideration hairstylist Judi Cooper-Sealy, who passed away in 2018. The opening wig of the series finale is one of Cooper-Sealy’s that O’Hara wanted to incorporate into Moira's collection. But it had to feel like Moira, and time was a concern—wig decisions were often made on set, with wigs switched after rehearsal and even minutes before a scene was shot. In the half hour O’Hara blocked the scene, Sorys went to work. “I sewed all these pieces of colored hair into the wig so we could incorporate Moira into Judi's wig.” The result is an instant classic.
The Wedding
“One of the most difficult pieces I had to make,” Sorys says of Moira’s show-stopping wig-meets-mitre, worn to officiate David and Patrick’s wedding. “It seemed like it would be a simple task but it was not. It took me weeks to figure out.” In terms of audacity, the final look rivals Rihanna at the Met Gala and Jude Law’s papal tiara, and it’s Sorys’s favorite look of the entire series. “I was working on it up until the last day, until Dan [Levy] said to me, 'Listen, if you can't come up with this, it's okay. You've been working so hard for weeks and maybe it just won't work.'" Sorys told the showrunner, "No. I have to have this."
Most real-life weddings have a few last-minute miracles that make the extra effort worthwhile. At nine o’clock the night before shooting, Sorys found the solution, using tile glue to fix the attachment issue. “Catherine was so happy with it,” she recalls. The icing on the cake? The reaction from the cast and crew, who had no idea what she was going to look like. “When she showed up to set people gasped,” Sorys explains. “It was one of the best moments of my career. She looked so beautifully crazy.” Sorys remembers the emotionally heightened day fondly. “We cried, we laughed. I loved watching it come to life. I knew it was going to be good, but I was floored by everything.” There’s no doubt this will go down in history—not only as one of Schitt’s Creek's best moments, but as one of the defining television looks of the new decade.
The Legacy
A post shared by Ana Sorys (@ana_sorys) on Apr 10, 2020 at 4:58am PDT
From drag queens and fan art to bathroom wallpaper, Moira’s hair is an inspiration. “I love that people want this legacy to live on [in their] art,” Sorys says. Moira’s style choices—and more importantly, her unabashed self-confidence—have had a far-reaching impact. “I get women messaging me saying they're going through chemo and would love to have a fun wig to wear—I love helping people with things like that,” Sorys says. The wig wall in the Rosebud Motel has been packed away, but there’s no doubt its influence will live on.
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