Dan Levy had to wear a neck brace to help with his anxiety during the final season of Schitt's Creek.
Speaking with British GQ, the 38-year-old actor opened up about his experience filming the series, which concluded in 2020 and swept the comedy categories at that year's Emmys. During the six years that the show was on, Levy said that he didn't have a social life and hardly slept, as he wore the hats of lead actor, showrunner, writer and occasional director.
As the show gained wider popularity, he said that his desire to perform well only increased, explaining, "Because the more we built the show, the more proud of it I was. And the more I wanted to create more compelling and dimensional stories, the more we wanted to expand our world."
By the sixth and final season, Levy's anxiety increased so much that he needed to wear a neck brace off-camera.
"Because the anxiety in my neck was so bad I couldn't move it," the actor recalled, noting that he hired an acupuncturist and a chiropractor to come to set "every day at lunch to work on my neck so that I could actually perform and not, you know, look like I needed a neck brace."
Despite the pain, the Canadian star told the magazine that he is proud of what he was able to accomplish with the show, especially in terms of LGBTQ+ representation.
"It's an incredibly emotional experience to know that I've done something that has helped, you know, lighten the load, or helped change the conversation within a family, or made someone feel empowered, because growing up that's all I feel like I hoped for," he said.
