Dan Levy Found His Voice and It Sounds Like Peaches

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With his new Netflix show Big Mistakes, Dan Levy manages to find humor in even the most high-stakes, high-stress situations. The Schitt’s Creek star plays a bumbling priest who finds himself caught up in a sinister crime ring alongside his equally ill-equipped sister Morgan, played by Taylor Ortega. To soundtrack the series, Levy called on his longtime musical crush Peaches to craft a score that would be as unexpected, brash, and thoroughly punk rock as she is. Levy hopped on a call with Peaches ahead of the show’s premiere to talk about releasing your inhibitions, earnestness, sex appeal, their own biggest mistakes, and the many joys of being Canadian.

DAN LEVY: Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy, busy life to do this.

PEACHES: Your busy life, our busy lives.

LEVY: Where are you in the world?

PEACHES: I’m in Austin, Texas.

LEVY: How is it?

PEACHES: I don’t know, I’ve just been inside [Laughs]. I’m on the last three dates of a 40-day tour.

LEVY: How does Texas respond to your show?

PEACHES: Great. I mean, everywhere [I perform] the queers and the good people come out. I love my audience. I just played in Tucson, Arizona, and Phoenix, and it was surprisingly amazing. The cutest people.

LEVY: I think you just make people feel so good. How rare is it that everyone gets to come together and just release for a night?

PEACHES: Oh, thank you. It feels like that. You’ll see people who are 60, 65, and then you’ll see 21-year-olds and they’re all rocking out. A lot of people come with their aunt or their mom or things like that. 

LEVY: I wish I could’ve gone to it. I wish our stars could’ve aligned.

PEACHES: Where are you?

LEVY: I’m at my house in Los Angeles for the first time in like two years. It’s crazy.

PEACHES: Wow. How does it feel? Does it feel like your house? Does it feel different?

LEVY: It’s nice to have exposure to sunlight. That’s actually a healing thing.

PEACHES: Right.

LEVY: No, it’s good. It’s nice to be back for four days and then, you know…

PEACHES: Then it starts.

LEVY: And then it all starts.

PEACHES: Do you feel settled? Like I was telling you when we were texting, I love that moment when the actual art of it is done and it’s still your little secret. Do you like that feeling also?

LEVY: I love that feeling. This is one of the few times where I feel so at peace with what we all made. I feel so excited about [Big Mistakes] that I really haven’t thought twice about what happens once something is out. I’ve found that criticism has become this incredibly binary thing. It’s either the worst thing anyone’s ever seen or the best. And I think reading these scathing things that have been written scared me into my shell for a long time. It wasn’t until I made this show that I realized if you are thrilled with the work that you do and you feel like what you intended to make is exactly what you’re putting out into the world, you don’t even think about anything other than that. So I’ve felt this lightness going into releasing this to the world that I don’t think I’ve ever felt before because I’m so happy. Do you have any fear when it comes to releasing your work?

PEACHES: I have more fear when I’m writing. The writing, for me, is really the toughest part. The performance is like, let’s go. Let. Us. Go. I want to unleash this on you. I want you to feel it. I want to feel it back. All that.

LEVY: I feel like we share, albeit very different worlds, a kind of holistic approach to what we want to say. You’re so involved with not just the music you make, but the costumes, and the way the show looks, and you surround yourself with people who are able to execute your vision exactly as you want. In looking at all the photos of your shows, it’s so…stimulating, for lack of a better word. Has that always been something that you wanted?

PEACHES: It’s definitely evolved. I wanted to be a theater director way back. I got into a director’s program for theater. It was the first year they had it and there were like seven people. I was like, “I want to make cool musicals.” And everyone’s like, “We’re doing Ibsen. We’re doing Chekhov,” so Chek-off. Nobody took me seriously.

LEVY: I would actually pay good money to see your version of a Chekhov play. In fact, that’s the only Chekhov I want to see from here on out, frankly.

PEACHES: Why not? I would do that. The thing is, I didn’t really understand that I was a musician and I didn’t really understand that being a musician could give me the power to do all those things. When I started doing music, I started with folk music because I had a partner who played acoustic guitar. We were kind of broken up, but her and I would sing songs about how we hurt each other and sing harmonies on it.

LEVY: Gorgeous.

PEACHES: But I realized, oh, I could be the lighting person for my own music. I could do the costume. I could direct this. I am the writer. I’m the performer. So in that way, I think we also share that total control micromanaging aspect of our work.

LEVY: I’ve gushed to you so many times in the past, but getting to collaborate with you on this show has been such a full-circle moment for me as a fan. Music is my release. Music is erotic to me. To get to go to your shows and to listen to your music, it’s so uninhibited. And being such a shy person, I would always put your music on when I was going out at night, like if I wanted to feel good, or if I had a date, or if I had a job interview, or whatever. Because, to me, you represented the dream in terms of a complete and utter lack of care for what other people think. As someone who struggles a lot with being perceived and with my confidence, you have always been this North Star for me in terms of possibility. And the work that you do on this show is so fucking good. You and Nora [Kroll-Rosenbaum] delivered something that I don’t think I’ve ever heard before in a score for television. Have you scored before?

PEACHES: No, I have never scored before. 

LEVY: What was that like? Did you have any doubts?

PEACHES: I wanted to take the challenge and, I have to say, Nora was an amazing guide. But I trusted that you wanted my voice, my style. I understood that you didn’t want it to be—and I mean this as a compliment—you didn’t want it to be cinematic. You wanted it to be disruptive and have a punch to it, and that’s what I like to do. I like to make every sound mean something in terms of hitting the same way a punk song would.

LEVY: I remember hearing the very first score cues that came in and screaming through the halls of our edit suite. It was so beyond what I had expected, and my expectations were high. It was this nutty, incredible jolt of energy that only the two of you could bring. I’m excited for people to hear it.

PEACHES: The score really has its own personality and it’s really a part of Big Mistakes. It’s undeniably its own world, and you really hear that in the soundtrack.

LEVY: I think there’s a sex appeal to it in a way. That’s the biggest thing I struggle with. I’ve spent so much of my life being very buttoned-up, and I’m in a chapter right now where I feel so much more uninhibited. Turning 40 makes you throw a middle finger up to everything and anyone that’s made you feel small. That is a question I have for you though because the art of your performance is so uninhibited. Is that your comfort zone? Being on stage with, like, a merkin and big cotton titties?

PEACHES: Performing? Yeah. When I was little, I was shy and I had to push myself to say things, but I was always interested in some form of entertainment. I found comfort in music and I found my voice. My way of giving the middle finger to my own shyness. Or just like a middle finger to how you’re supposed to be brought up, like how repressed we are, how we’re supposed to hate our bodies, how we’re supposed to be scared of this and that. Being creative, it pushed me to be less inhibited. Like I would wear little, pink shorts at the beginning because people thought I was so aggressive. So I’d wear pink and people would be pointing, literally pointing, at my camel toe and the hair that was coming out of the side of the shorts. And I was like, “Oh my God, that is what people are focusing on? I’m going to put more hair there. I’m going to make an exaggerated camel toe.” It showed me where people were at and how I can motivate people to see it in a different way through my absurdity or over-the-topness.

LEVY: Or comfort people. If they’re seeing you do that to an exaggerated extent, it gives permission for other people…

PEACHES: To be the way they want to be. I’m not telling people to be like me. I’m not saying wear 18 boobs with Barbie head nipples on them.

LEVY: More people should wear 18 boobs with Barbie head nipples on them!

PEACHES: They should. But that’s what I’m doing, and you can do whatever you want.

LEVY: Did you find that Canada had anything to do with your rebellion?

PEACHES: I think what’s great about Canada is that you’re beside America, so you see that ridiculousness and you see just how audacious it is, and you’re like, “Oh, that’s not the country I live in.” Like when you’re in America, you’re like, “Yeah, I’m that, too.”

LEVY: Yeah. I also find that Canada doesn’t let you get away with a lot. Ego isn’t necessarily celebrated in Canada, and I do think it’s a culture that can really keep you in your place. You seem to be someone who has taken the conservatism of Canada and really cast it aside.

PEACHES: When I started and I was still living in Canada, there was no box to tick for what I was doing. Also, I hear you talk a lot about sincerity, and I feel like that’s so, so important. You’re like, “God forbid, I should be earnest.” No, be earnest. Be sincere.

LEVY: I know.

PEACHES: It’s so important, especially in comedy. I love that [with Big Mistakes] you’re saying, like, “I want to do this, but I want to be careful of how I am portraying people or how this is all seen.” And you can still have a cunty attitude. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to be you, but it’s okay to care, you know?

LEVY: Yeah, it’s a strange relationship. I’ve often questioned whether my sincerity, or my earnestness, or whatever is seen as being lame and boring. But I’ve also come to accept that if that’s the truth for some people, who cares. I’d rather care than not, honestly.

PEACHES: Yeah, it’s important. It’s good. 

LEVY: It’s good to care.

PEACHES: It’s good to care.

LEVY: It’s great to care.

PEACHES: It’s good to be Canadian.

LEVY: Exactly. I have one question for you just to circle back to our show. Do you have a big mistake that you’ve made that you care to share? A mistake that’s stuck with you.

PEACHES: Yeah. I used to work in a radio station at York University and they had these two movie posters sitting there all the time. They weren’t doing anything, they were just stacked up. And I was like, “What are you guys doing with these posters?” And they’re like, “I don’t know.” And I’m like, “Can I have them?” And then I worked in a poster shop, so I took them there and I sold them. One day the radio station manager came in, and he was like, “What are you doing? You have our posters and you’re selling them.” I was like, “Oh my God, what am I doing?” I didn’t even think that it was wrong.

LEVY: I think you were a savvy entrepreneur, frankly, from a young age.

PEACHES: I don’t even think I was keeping the money…I don’t know what I was doing.

LEVY: That is also the most Canadian big mistake I can think of—selling $5 posters that were given to you. It wasn’t real theft. It was just a scheme that left you feeling a little guilty. Mine is getting involved in the tiniest, most Canadian hit-and-run you’ve ever experienced in your life. I was 16. I went to parallel park my parents’ car at the bakery that I was working at at the time and I was reversing into the spot. I lightly bumped the car behind me, panicked, started to drive out of the spot, bumped the car in front of me, freaked, reversed, bumped the car behind me again. At this point, people were gathering. I didn’t know that you should get out of the car and leave a note. So I left. I drove away from the scene of the crime I had created and my mom, several months later, got a call from the police saying the car was involved in a hit-and-run.

PEACHES: Wow.

LEVY: It was the most Canadian hit-and-run on the face of the planet, but that is the big mistake that I think about often.

PEACHES: There you go. Those are our Canadian big mistakes.

LEVY: Great. Well, keep me abreast of your travels, and I will make sure that I see the show.

PEACHES: I’ll give you more than a breast. I’ll give you, like, eight breasts.

LEVY: Nine.

PEACHES: Nine breasts. Have fun at the party! I’m sorry I can’t make it.

LEVY: Thank you, we’ll miss you there!